And, in what could be the most significant move yet, a super PAC that backs former House speaker Gingrich announced just before last night’s debate that it planned to spend $1 million to promote a 27-minute documentary excoriating Romney’s work at Bain.
Gingrich himself previously attacked Romney for the money “earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees’’ and then recanted, but the effort by the Winning Our Future super PAC doubles down on that charge. As ominous-sounding music plays in the background, a narrator alleges that Romney’s practices wound up “often killing jobs for big financial rewards.’’
Rick Tyler, who for years was Gingrich’s spokesman and now is senior adviser to Winning Our Future, said in a telephone interview that the point of the film is that “Romney cloaks himself in free enterprise but what he was engaged in at Bain Capital was not free enterprise at all. It was predatory paper-shuffling. It would target companies and their assets . . . bankrupting companies and causing thousands of employees to lose their jobs.”
Tyler sent the Globe an advance copy of the video, which shows a title, “When Mitt Romney Came To Town’’ splashed across an image of what appears to be a closed factory.
Tyler said that an advertising campaign based on the documentary will begin airing as soon as tomorrow in South Carolina in an effort to undercut Romney, who is leading in recent polls in that state. That primary will be held Jan. 21.
The super PAC is allowed to collect unlimited donations as long as it does not coordinate with a presidential campaign. Gingrich has complained that a pro-Romney super PAC attacked him unfairly during the Iowa caucuses, where Gingrich came in fourth place after leading the polls in early December.
