Posted yesterday at 10:12pm
 Richard Ellis/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty slightly changed his tune on his vice presidential prospects Thursday when he didn’t rule out the possibility that he might get picked as Mitt Romney’s running mate. Just days before, he had told reporters to take him off the list.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Pawlenty, a former presidential candidate himself, said anyone who is asked to be Romney’s running mate would be “honored to serve if asked.”
“Well I’m going to do whatever I can to help Mitt Romney defeat Barack Obama, because I think the future of the country is at stake and I think Mitt Romney is going to be a fantastic president for our country. I’ll do whatever I can do to help him,” Pawlenty said. “He’s going to have a lot of great people to pick from. Obviously, anyone would be honored to served if asked, I’ve just been telling people, look, I think I can help in other ways but obviously anybody would be honored to serve if asked.”
But just earlier this week, during an event at the University of Minnesota, Pawlenty had a direct message for all those speculating about whether his name will appear on the GOP ticket: “Remove my name from the list.”
Asked if the campaign has asked him to turn over documents to undergo vetting, Pawlenty, who serves as the national co-chair of Romney’s campaign, remained mum, refusing to talk about the “process.”
“Well, the Romney campaign has a policy -- and I’m a national co-chair of the campaign -- that we don’t talk about the vice presidential policy in terms of timing, whether it relates to me or anyone else or the aspects of that,” Pawlenty said. "That’s just the campaign’s policy. We don’t discuss the details of that process.”
Pawlenty joins another VP contender -- Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. -- in adopting the tight-lipped approach. After the Florida senator slipped up and referred to himself as a vice president instead of a senator, Rubio decided to stop commenting on the vice presidential selection process.
Pawlenty endorsed Romney shortly after giving up his own candidacy last year. After a poor showing in the Ames, Iowa, Straw Poll in August, he became a lead surrogate for Romney, most prominently in his home state of Minnesota. Romney lost Minnesota to former Sen. Rick Santorum, an embarrassment for Pawlenty.
Pawlenty underwent the vetting process four years ago when John McCain considered selecting him as a running mate before deciding to go with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 7:29pm
 Photodisc/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- After a number of Capitol Hill offices have fallen victim to a crime wave of burglary and theft this spring, the U.S. Capitol Police continues to investigate who might be responsible, leaving congressional staffers on high alert and clamping down on their personal belongings and office equipment.
At least five congressional offices, all on the House side of the Capitol, were broken into last month, with most of the break-ins suspected to have occurred after office hours when the workplace was empty.
Among the victims, Rep. Jon Runyan, a freshman Republican from New Jersey, who was targeted twice in back-to-back weeks. Sources close to Runyan say that in the first instance a personal Burberry scarf was lifted from the congressman’s personal office. A staff member’s jacket was also stolen from a common area of the office, in addition to various knickknacks from office desks, and about $10 to $20 in coins. When burglars came back a week later, a Flip camera and a Canon digital camera were also stolen.
In the office of Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., the perpetrator also took alcohol, including some “commemorative” wine bottles in the office and other items like autographed baseballs. Staffers were also disappointed to learn that a 30-year collection of commemorative eggs autographed by numerous presidents of the United States from the White House Easter egg roll was stolen. Everything burglarized from Lewis’s office was taken from staff areas, except for a baseball that Whitey Ford autographed, which was taken from a display cabinet in the congressman’s personal office.
Staffers working for the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform also had cash stolen from their desks. The Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security was also reportedly targeted for theft.
At the office of Rep. Trey Gowdy, a freshman Republican from South Carolina, thieves broke in April 11 and stole valuable electronics, including a 27″ Apple Cinema display monitor, valued at $999; a Canon EOS Rebel XS camera, valued at $479; a Nikon camera, valued at $270; and various office supplies.
According to the members’ handbook, lawmakers are held personally accountable for any thefts from their offices. Once a police report is filed, the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer [CAO] investigates the theft with the help of the U.S. Capitol Police.
In a Dear Colleague letter responding to the thefts sent to all offices in the House of Representatives, the committee on House Administration announced that police have increased surveillance and patrols and asks that all offices “remain vigilant and immediately report any suspicious activity to the USCP Criminal Investigations Section.”
In a letter obtained by ABC News, Daniel Strodel, the Chief Administrative Officer, wrote Gowdy May 4 to inform him that the CAO had “completed its investigation regarding the Apple Monitor reported stolen” and he was liable to send a personal check for $763.63 to the United States Treasury.
The letter, which is described as standard operating procedure, also informed Gowdy of his right to appeal for a waiver from the Committee on House Administration, which the congressman quickly filed. Gowdy just learned Wednesday that he successfully won his appeal for a waiver.
Now, rather than having to pay out cash from his own pocket, the liability is transferred to the taxpayer, as the cost of replacing the equipment can be covered by a Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA], which is the budget authorized by Congress for each member in support of their duties to their constituents.
Congressional sources explain that the waiver is almost always granted as long as there is not proven negligence, and the liability rules are intended to bring accountability to a member’s office.
A source within Runyan’s office revealed that staff has since made it a habit to lock any personal items in their desks at the close of business, and the office also changed its cleaning schedule, moving from night cleaning when the office is empty, to an early-morning clean-up as the day is beginning.
Although the USCP won’t reveal whether they have any promising leads or suspects, congressional sources said that the practice is usually for a supervisor with a master key to unlock multiple offices at night to enable a team of custodial staff to move freely throughout the office buildings.
So how common are burglaries in congressional offices? With more than 10,000 employees at work every day on Capitol Hill, sources believe it’s not entirely uncommon.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who recently served for four years as speaker of the House, said that she is not aware of any instances of theft from any of her offices during her 25-year congressional career, but she said she would not be surprised if something has been taken over the years.
“I don’t think so, not that I’m aware of,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “But I’ve been here 25 years, so somebody must have. I don’t know if anything happened way back when, but nothing of any consequence.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 6:12pm
 Photos.com/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Americans Elect, the group that aimed to nominate a third presidential candidate through an online primary, ended its nomination process Thursday after no prospective candidates met their minimum requirements.
To run in its online primary a candidate had to get 10,000 “clicks” of support (1,000 in at least 10 states). Buddy Roemer was the closest to reaching that goal, but he got less than 6,300 “supporters.”
“As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June,” the group said in a statement. “The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”
The group has spent two years and millions of dollars collecting signatures to get a spot on the ballot in all 50 states in November’s general election and creating a secure online nominating convention. They succeeded in getting on the presidential ballot in 29 states, including California, which required a whopping 1.6 million petition signatures.
While the group failed to entice a qualified candidate, its creators maintain that it “has achieved its operational goals.”
“We are continuing the Americans Elect mission of creating more choice in our political system, giving candidates unaffiliated with the nominating process of either major party an authentic way to run for office and giving the American people a greater voice in our political process.”
Americans Elect had all the trappings of a potential game changer in presidential politics. By harnessing the power of the Internet and the overwhelming dissatisfaction with the two major political parties, the group aimed to nominate a bipartisan presidential ticket. The presidential candidate and their vice presidential running mate could not both be in the same party.
But with the Democratic and Republican parties so ingrained in the American political system, finding a candidate that would buck their party to run for Americans Elect proved nearly impossible, Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist who worked with Americans Elect to recruit candidates, told ABC News.
“If you have invested your lifetime in politics as a Democrat or a Republican, you know very well that if you take the Americans Elect path or any similar path really there’s no turning back,” Sragow said. “You are going to face the reality that you will find yourself suddenly not welcome in your party.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 5:49pm
 Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Obama is making a targeted effort to court the votes of military veterans and their families, believing the constituency is in play for November and could make a difference in key battleground states.
The Obama campaign Thursday kicked off a grassroots organizing effort -- dubbed “Veterans and Military Families for Obama” -- led by retired Naval officer and Iraq war veteran Rob Diamond.
“It’s no secret to anyone where our military bases are in this country and where our veterans and military communities are located,” Diamond said of the strategy on a conference call with reporters. “And the goal of our program is to mobilize and energize and activate those folks where they live."
“Obviously, a state like Virginia is a critically important state with a large military presence, and that’s where our veterans and military families live, states like North Carolina and a state like Florida,” he said.
Obama lost the veterans’ vote in 2008 to John McCain (himself a veteran), 55 to 45 percent. But campaign officials now believe that changing demographics in the country and the military, coupled with Obama’s record on veterans issues, could give him an edge.
“We’re going to break down that mythology about the military voting history and veteran voting history,” Diamond said.
The campaign is highlighting Obama’s support for the post-9/11 GI Bill, tax credits for businesses that hire veterans, public-private partnerships to boost veteran employment, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as foreign policy achievements like ending the war in Iraq and killing Osama bin Laden.
Central to the pitch to veteran voters is first lady Michelle Obama, who appears with the president in a web video announcing the political outreach effort. She has spent the past few months traveling the country to mark the one-year anniversary of her Joining Forces initiative, which promotes support for veterans and their families.
The White House and Obama campaign have insisted her efforts have had no ties to politics. “Obviously the first lady’s Joining Forces effort is part of her initiatives at the White House and not linked to the campaign,” campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Thursday.
But the president himself suggested that his wife’s advocacy is a part of his pitch for a second term.
“There’s nothing I take more seriously than my responsibility to those who sacrifice their own safety to defend ours,” Obama says in the video. “That’s why Michelle and I have made supporting veterans and military families a top priority from the start.”
The president’s backers say “tens of thousands” of veterans have already enlisted with the Obama campaign group.
“They’re stepping up because they know voters will face a clear choice in November,” said Delaware Attorney General, Army veteran and son of the vice president, Beau Biden. “Veterans know the vision and leadership we need in a commander-in-chief and they know the stakes and the consequences of sitting on the sidelines and would wake up on the morning after election day would be too late.”
The campaign has been sharply critical of Romney on veterans issues, claiming that his support of the House Republican budget would mean veterans programs would be cut by $11 billion a year. They also say he would reduce veterans health care benefits by privatizing the system, pointing to the governor’s November 2011 suggestion that benefits could be delivered as vouchers.
Romney allies have pointed to his record as governor of Massachusetts as evidence that he would be a staunch advocate for veterans and their families. They also say his economic policies would do more to boost economic status of veterans overall.
Veterans “are not being well served today because of some of the policies in place under the Obama administration,” said former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi, who served in the Bush administration and is a Romney supporter.
“Today, we see a significantly higher unemployment rate amongst those young men and women who are coming home and can’t find meaningful jobs. And it impacts their well being; it impacts their mental health which is another area that they are not being well served,” he said.
The unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan was 9.2 percent in April, according to the Labor Department. Among all veterans, the jobless rate was 7.1 percent.
The national unemployment rate was 8.1 percent during the same period, the government reported.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 3:43pm
 Joe Raedle/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Reports of a plan to air attack ads against President Obama by rehashing ties to his former pastor, the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, quickly drew the condemnation Thursday of presumed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Joe Ricketts, the money man reported to be considering the plan.
Romney on Thursday disavowed the conservative group that The New York Times said had planned to possibly bankroll the ads.
“I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described,” Romney told the conservative website Townhall.com. “I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity, particularly for those in the middle class of America.”
The Times reported Thursday that a $10 million plan developed by “a group of high-profile Republican strategists” and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, will seek to link “Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.”
“The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,’” the Times reported.
But a statement released on behalf of Ricketts argued that the Wright plan was only one being considered by the PAC. Brian Baker, president of the Ending Spending Action Fund, said Ricketts is an independent who is focused on fiscal policy to help defeat President Obama.
“Not only was this plan merely a proposal – one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors – but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take,” according to the statement released by Baker.
“Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a president this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.”
Romney said if anyone is guilty of launching personal attacks, it is the Obama campaign, which he accused of “character assassination” against him.
“I think what we’ve seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination,” he added. “I hope that isn’t the course of this campaign. So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about....It’s interesting that we’re talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]; I hope people also are looking at what he’s doing, and saying, ‘Why is he running an attack campaign? Why isn’t he talking about his record?’”
Prior to the candidate’s own remarks about the report, first reported by The New York Times, Romney had told the media aboard a charter flight that he had yet to read the papers and couldn’t comment.
Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, also issued a statement distancing the campaign from the unaffiliated GOP group and arguing that Romney would run his campaign based on issues, unlike, according to Rhoades, the Obama campaign.
“Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” Rhoades said in an email statement. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney” and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
Prior to Romney’s interview with Townhall, the Obama for America campaign accused Romney of “falling short” in his campaign’s response.
“This morning’s story revealed the appalling lengths to which Republican operatives and SuperPacs apparently are willing to go to tear down the President and elect Mitt Romney,” it said in a statement Thursday. “The blueprint for a hate-filled, divisive campaign of character assassination speaks for itself. It also reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics. Once again, Governor Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 3:27pm
 Ethan Miller/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) -- Mitt Romney said Thursday that he is “disappointed” in President Obama’s campaign for being “focused on character assassination,” specifying that he considers the president’s attacks on his career at Bain to be an attempt to make him appear to be “not a good person or not a good guy.”
“I have been disappointed with the president's campaign to date, which is focused on character assassination,” said Romney. “I just think that we're wiser to talk about the issues of the day, what we do to get America working again, talk about our respective records.”
When asked to specify what he considers to be a character assassination, Romney pointed to the recent advertisement released by the Obama reelection campaign that pegged him as a “job destroyer” for his time at Bain Capital.
“Obviously his efforts to look at my work at Bain is to try to characterize me in a way that isn't accurate,” said Romney. “My effort at Bain Capital, as you know, was in effort case designed to make the enterprises we invested in more successful, to grow them.”
“There's this fiction that some have that somehow you can be highly successful by stripping assets from enterprise and walking away with lots of money and killing the enterprise. There may be some people who know how to do that. I sure don't,” said Romney. “And the purpose of the president's ads are not to describe success and failure but to somehow suggest that I'm not a good person or not a good guy and I think the American people will know better than that if they don't already."
Romney, referring to a New York Times report Thursday morning that detailed the plans of a conservative group to develop an ad that would link Obama to the controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., said that he saw glimpses of character assassination in that ad, too.
“Having a campaign focused on character assassination is one of the things I find offensive among many others in the PAC description that came in the New York Times,” said Romney.
“If that's accurate, why, that's something I repudiate,” said Romney.
Romney also revealed that his own campaign plans to release a television ad in the next few days that will be positive.
“I certainly hope that you get a chance to see our first ad, that'll come up in I think a couple of days, it will be a positive ad on what I would do if I were president,” Romney said. “It'll be contrasting with the president's ad, which again is a character assassination ad."
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 2:37pm
 ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Fred Davis, the GOP media guru who pitched the attack ad campaign against President Obama focused on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, describes John McCain in the document as a “crusty old politician who often seemed confused, burdened with a campaign just as confused…”
Davis was a media consultant for McCain’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, having come up with the “celebrity” ad that generated some buzz, and an attack ad focused on Wright that McCain refused to green-light. But he retained his relationship with the Senator and came up with the media for McCain’s successful Senate re-election campaign in 2010, including the “complete the dang fence” ad.
Mark Salter, a close friend and top adviser to McCain, says of Davis, “Fred is a creative guy, but he requires round-the-clock adult supervision. If you take your eyes off him for a moment, you’re chasing demon sheep, witches and the yellow peril.”
Salter was referring to Davis ads for ultimately unsuccessful Republican candidates: one for GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina that depicted a primary opponent as a “demon sheep”; one for GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell in which she denies being a witch; and one for Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Pete Hoekstra that uses some unfortunate images.
Davis could not be reached for comment, but he has said, “If I picked what’s on my tombstone, it would be: ‘If you don’t notice it, why bother?’”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 1:40pm
 Sankei via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- A set of lawmakers on Capitol Hill expressed frustration Thursday that states, not the federal government, will have to deal with the majority of clean-up when marine debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan hits the West Coast.
During the first hearing on tsunami debris held by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard Thursday, David Kennedy, Assistant Administrator for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, outlined the agency’s efforts to handle the debris, which includes developing models to predict the track of the debris to conducting marine debris surveys in impacted areas over the next two years.
But Kennedy also admitted states will have to assume the majority of debris clean-up responsibilities, a suggestion with which the chair of the subcommittee took issue.
In the 2012 fiscal year, NOAA’s Marine Debris Program received $4.6 million, but President Obama’s 2013 fiscal year budget proposed a 25 percent cut to the program.
“I think we should be discriminating in terms of what’s essential as a priority, and obviously this is a priority and we should have some pre-planning and some forethought involved knowing that the bulk of this degree is going to occur presumably in 2013 and 2014,” Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said. “Here we are facing reductions in the very program that’s going to be essential. Ok, well obviously it doesn’t make sense, and that’s something that needs to be remedied.”
The government of Japan estimated last year’s tsunami swept 5 million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean. Over half of the debris sank near the coast of Japan, but 1.5 million tons of debris are still floating and while some of the debris is expected to break down, it is still expected that some products, including lumber, plastics and vessels, will hit the coasts of the United States in the next two years. Kennedy said experts say it is highly unlikely the debris is radioactive, but there is a possibility for hazardous items to drift ashore.
“I’m definitely going to react when thousands of cans of hazardous materials wash ashore and they have things like rat poisoning and gas in them. We are going to react,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said.
In early April, a “ghost ship” set adrift by last year’s tsunami in Japan surfaced off the coast of Alaska and eventually sank in the Gulf of Alaska after a Coast Guard cutter fired at it. Earlier this month, a Harley Davidson that was swept away by the tsunami washed up on the shores of Canada.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 12:20pm
 ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday added a new twist to Democrats’ economic argument against Mitt Romney, saying his business practices at Bain Capital resulted in costs to taxpayers.
“If the job is to make sure investors do well, at the expense of a company that employs everybody else, you all end up paying for it,” Biden told a crowd of supporters outside a car dealership in Martins Ferry, Ohio. He was speaking specifically about the case of GST Steel, which Bain acquired in 1993 and was forced into bankruptcy and shuttered in 2001.
“People who had nothing to do with it, were not associated with it, never worked at the steel mill they talked about, they all paid for it,” Biden said. “Here’s why: because we don’t let people just go out there and beg in the street. We have unemployment insurance. Taxpayers pay for that! We don’t let those guys who lost their jobs, let their kids go without healthcare; we provide it! And everybody pays for it. The taxpayers pay for it!”
Biden, on the second day of his campaign swing through eastern Ohio, also pushed back on criticism of Democrats’ assault on Romney’s Bain record, insisting it’s fair game when evaluating the economic values a candidate would bring to the White House.
“We’re not anti-capitalist! For God sake, it’s the system that built the country!” Biden proclaimed. “We hope investors do well. But you can’t build an economy, an economy of the future where the only people who do well are the investors and everybody else pays the price. You can’t do that. Workers get laid off, that’s true. Companies get shut down. Whole communities suffer from the effects when that happens. That’s no way to build an economy. That’s no way to create job creators.”
Perhaps a nod to charges that the Obama campaign is engaging in character assassination, Biden tempered his criticism of Romney by heaping praise on him personally.
“Now Gov. Romney, he loves you all, I don’t doubt that a bit,” Biden told the crowd. “Gov. Romney’s a good decent man. In my experience he’s a patriotic guy. He’s a religious man. He raised five beautiful kids. He’s got a beautiful, bright wife. But he has a fundamentally different view of how to make this country go.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 11:31am
 Bill Pugliano/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- New Republican ads featuring President Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright and his inflammatory comments may not be made after all.
The New York Times reported Thursday that a new “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney was planning to replay the indignation over Wright’s controversial sermons that were a highlight of the 2008 presidential campaign.
The news of Wright being resurrected in 2012 threw the Obama and Romney campaigns into spin mode early Thursday.
Romney’s campaign manager quickly said in a statement that the team doesn’t support “efforts on our side” to run ads of “character assassination.”
But the leaked proposal, authored by the GOP ad man Fred Davis and brokerage firm guru Joe Ricketts, has made things complicated now that it’s public. A person familiar with the super PAC tells ABC News that the leaked document was simply a proposal that was never acted on, and that no plan had been made to make any ads.
Davis told ABC News a month ago that he’d lined up the main donors for the new super PAC to target Obama, and that he expected the war chest to be in the millions. “The money’s already here,” he said.
Obama’s campaign manager countered by saying that Romney had “fallen short of the standard” set by John McCain in 2008, when he rejected the idea of a negative campaign.
Both campaigns, however, have used negative ads. Obama’s latest ads portray Romney as a corporate “vampire” who bankrupted a steel company while profiting off of it. And Romney survived the primary season partly by flooding the airwaves with commercials that portrayed his opponents negatively.
Democrats also are highlighting an interview Romney gave to Sean Hannity in February in which he mentioned Wright unprompted, in response to a clip of Obama saying “we are no longer a Christian nation.”
“I’m not sure which is worse: him listening to Reverend Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation,” Romney said at the time.
The new Republican proposal to bring Wright back into the fray says, “The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way.” The proposal reportedly involves $10 million.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 10:04am
 Jeff Swensen/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) -- Mitt Romney’s campaign manager said the campaign would “repudiate any efforts on our side” to run “a campaign of character assassination” after a New York Times story revealed on Thursday the possibility of a group of conservatives bankrolling ads that would link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
“Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” Matt Rhoades said in an e-mail statement Thursday. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney' and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
The Times reported Thursday that a $10 million plan developed by “a group of high-profile Republican strategists” and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, will seek to link “Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.”
“The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,’” the Times said.
Romney was asked about the story on a charter flight between Miami and Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday morning, declining to comment and instead saying that he had yet to read the papers on Thursday, according to Bloomberg News.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 6:18am
 Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) -- Mitt Romney’s around-the-clock fundraising schedule seems to be paying off -- literally.
Romney, with the help of the Republican National Committee, raised $40.1 million in April -- nearly matching the $43 million raised by President Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the same month -- proving the strength of his fundraising campaign since essentially clinching the nomination.
The fundraising numbers, expected to be released formally by the campaign Thursday morning, were first reported by The New York Times and later confirmed by ABC News.
The April haul far exceeds the money the presumptive GOP nominee raised in March -- just $12.6 million -- and clearly shows the boost the campaign got from joining forces with the RNC to develop a Victory Fund, which allows donors who have already maxed out to Romney to then give more money -- and in larger amounts.
Romney, a multi-millionaire, has still not given any of his personal fortune to his campaign, which will report Thursday morning that it has $61.4 million in cash on hand.
Romney’s fundraising schedule has undoubtedly ramped up since joining forces with the RNC in early April, but the candidate spent only the later half fundraising with the Victory Fund -- the first two fundraisers officially organized by the committee not occurring until April 15 in Florida. Since then, Romney has maintained an aggressive fundraising schedule.
On Wednesday alone, Romney is said to have raised more than $4.3 million at two fundraisers in South Florida. The candidate has two more fundraisers in the Sunshine State on Thursday, and has held several earlier in the week.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 6:17am
 Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.
In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut on Friday. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.
At a news conference Thursday morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” (“Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy”) Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”
The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.
The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Tom Goodman, Saverin’s spokesman, told Bloomberg News in an email.
Last year 1,700 people renounced their U.S. citizenship.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 3:31am
 Hemera/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The White House on Wednesday reacted to news that representations of President Obama’s budget had been voted down by the House and Senate by decrying the introduction of the amendments, by Republicans, as “gimmicks.”
“Gimmicks are not solutions,” White House press secretary Jay Carney emailed to ABC News. “The American people overwhelmingly support a balanced approach to our long-term budget challenges. That’s the approach the President supports. The sooner Republicans drop their intransigence and join the American people in supporting a balanced approach, the sooner Congress will be able to come together and reach a compromise.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Miss., introduced a budget amendment representing the president’s budget request; the Sessions amendment was voted down 99-0.
A similar effort from Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-SC, was rejected in the House 414-0.
Sessions told reporters that it was “stunning” that no one voted for the version of the Obama budget he put forward.
“A sitting president of the United States, seeking reelection, can’t lay out a plan that will gain a single vote in the House or Senate for the financial future of America,” he said. “It speaks volumes
While the Sessions and Mulvaney bills put forward the same topline numbers as those in the president’s budget, neither offered any specifics. The Sessions legislation was 56 pages long; actual budgets are closer to 2,000 pages long.
Thus, a White House official said, the Sessions proposal was a “shell that could be filled with a number of things that could hurt our economy and hurt the middle class. For example, rather than ending tax breaks for millionaires his budget could hit the revenue target by raising taxes on the middle class and rather than ending wasteful programs, his budget could hit its spending target with severe cuts to important programs.”
“This is the president’s budget,” said the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad of South Dakota, indicating the voluminous budget proposal Obama offered. “This is what Sen. Sessions has presented as being the president’s budget,” he said, indicating the much slimmer document.
“I think it’s readily apparent there is a big difference between the president’s budget, which I hold in my hands, and what Sen. Sessions has presented as being the president’s budget. This is not the president’s budget. So, of course, we’re not going to support it. It’s not what the president proposed,” Conrad continued.
The White House official said the Sessions and Mulvaney’s bills were mere GOP stunts to get Democrats on record opposing "the president’s budget” as well as distracting from what the House Republican budget would do, which the official described as “protect(ing) massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires while making the middle class and seniors pay.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted Wednesday night
 ABC News(STEUBENVILLE, Ohio) -- One of Mitt Romney’s spokesmen, in Ohio to attend Vice President’s Joe Biden’s speech Wednesday in nearby Youngstown, Ohio, got some unexpected one-on-one time with the veep that evening when he was seated next to him at dinner, where he apparently proceeded to drill him on his position on coal production.
Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told ABC News that he went to find a restaurant in Steubenville, Ohio, after the Biden event and came across Maples Spaghetti House. He and his dinner partner, Romney’s Ohio State Director Chris Maloney, walked into the restaurant, where they got swept by Secret Service, which Williams said tipped him off to Biden’s impending arrival.
Williams said he was seated at the “first available table” in the dining room when, moments later, Biden came down and sat at the table right next to him. Williams promptly tweeted a photo.
After a brief photo-op with the traveling press, Williams said a staffer leaned over to Biden and whispered something, prompting the vice president to summon the Romney spokesman over to his table.
“Oh, there’s Ryan,” Williams recalled Biden saying. “He pointed me out and called me over, and we exchanged pleasantries.”
According to Williams, while there was no mention of Romney, Biden did ask if he’d like to join his table so he’d have a better chance of eavesdropping.
Williams said he asked the vice president why he was in coal country, challenging him on his support of the coal industry. According to Williams, Biden refused to answer when he asked the vice president why he believes coal is more dangerous than terrorism.
“He disagreed with that and didn’t want to answer my questions,” said Williams, who added that Biden was “very cordial” and “seems like a nice man.”
After the exchange, Williams said he returned to his table and Biden was relocated to another area of the dining room.
Amy Dudley, Biden’s press secretary, also tweeted a photo of the run-in with the message, “So nice of @RyanGOP to join us for dinner at Naples Spaghetti House in Steubenville.”
Ben LaBolt, a press secretary for the Obama reelection campaign, seemed less amused in his tweet, writing to Williams, “Staffer apparently doesn’t believe the press is capable of asking questions, shouts his own at the candidate. #classy.”
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who was dining with Biden, told the Columbus Dispatch that Biden didn’t seem put off by Williams’ questions.
“The vice president did not seem to be the least bothered by it,” Strickland told the paper. "I wasn’t bothered by it, I didn’t perceive it being out of line in any way or inappropriate in any way. I think politics can be fun and enjoyable. They can be a little spicy at times.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
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