Newark Mayor Cory Booker Sick Of 'Being Used By The GOP'
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Cory Booker, pictured here in 2009. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Los Angeles Times reported Booker feels he is "being used by the GOP" in tactics to boost presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney's campaign.
During an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press," the Democrat mayor said he was "nauseated" by the Obama campaign's repeated attacks on Romney's track record at Bain Capital.
The backlash was swift. By Monday, Booker had had enough, and appeared on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" to respond.
“Here they are plucking sound bytes out of that interview to manipulate them in a cynical manner," he said, "to use them for their own purposes."
Booker later added, “To say ‘I Stand With Cory Booker’—I have not seen a Republican national candidate, with maybe the exception of Jack Kemp a long time ago, willing to stand with me in places like Newark, New Jersey; Camden, New Jersey; Paterson—places that often the GOP seems to want to imagine don’t exist."
President Obama has stood by his campaign's tactics.
From the L.A. Times:
“My opponent, Gov. Romney – his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He’s not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts,” Obama said. “He’s saying, 'I'm a business guy. I know how to fix it.' And this is his business. When you’re president as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.”
Attacks on Romney for his role at Bain Capital have been persistent throughout not just the presidential, but the primary campaigns as well, most recently highlighted by a new ad by pro-Obama “super PAC” Priorities USA, using Texas Gov. Rick Perry against the former Massachusetts governor.
"I happen to think that companies like Bain Capital could've come in and helped these companies if they truly were venture capitalists, but they're not. They're vulture capitalists," Perry said in January.
The L.A. Times went on to point out Obama's campaign released another ad attacking "Romney Economics" Monday, while Romney has railed on the "Big Bain Backfire." The lasting effect on Booker's reputation remains unclear, but it's likely this will continue to be an issue along the road to November.
