Super PAC launches Bain Capital attack ads

A super PAC supporting President Obama targets Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital record, echoing an official campaign ad released Monday.

In “Heads or Tails,” Priorities USA focuses on a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill bought by the private equity firm Romney co-founded. The mill went bankrupt under Bain, and workers were not given promised benefits.

“With Romney and Bain Capital the objective was to make money. Whether the companies they came in and worked with made money or not, was irrelevant. Bain Capital always made money,” former GST Steel worker Pat Wells says in the ad. “If we lost, they made money. If we survived, they made money. It’s as simple as that.”

Wells declares, “He promised us the same thing he’s promising the United States. He’ll give you the same thing he gave us: nothing. He’ll take it all.”

The ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia as part of a $4 million buy. That investment suggests the pro-Obama group is no longer struggling to raise funds on the level of its Republican counterparts.

Obama released a two-minute ad Monday about the same mill, called “Steel.” Both make the case that Romney is not qualified to talk about job creation because his concern was his investors, not the companies he bought.

“Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as Governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation,” campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul said Monday.

Romney argued in January that Bain bought firms in trouble and always tried to make them profitable, often succeeding.

Romney left Bain by the time the mill closed in 2001. Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, told reporters Monday that the story was fair game: “He set this in motion. It was his structure that put this in place. He was still making profits.”