Mitt Romney yesterday professed his love for the Big Apple and its deep-pocketed donors during a fund-raising swing through the city — and he lashed out at President Obama and his allies for their latest and increasingly bitter TV attack ads.
“Whatever happened to a campaign of hope and change,” lamented Romney on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show, which aired yesterday as Romney headed to a couple of top-dollar Manhattan fund-raisers.
“I thought [Obama] was a new kind of politician. But instead, his campaign and the people working with him have focused almost exclusively on personal attacks,” Romney said. “It’s really disappointing.”
It was the first time Romney addressed the tenor of the campaign, including a widely discredited TV ad by a pro-Obama super PAC in which a man accuses Romney of contributing to his wife’s death from lung cancer.
The ad features Joe Soptic, who says he lost his job and his health insurance after Romney’s private-equity firm took over and later shut the steel mill where he worked. As a result, he says, his wife died because they could not afford medical care.
Romney scolded Obama and his allies for repeatedly choosing to “blast ahead” with such outlandish attack ads after they are disproved and discredited by fact-checking organizations.
The Obama campaign has insisted it has nothing to do with the ad, even though a top Obama campaign aide once hosted a conference call in which Soptic made the same allegations.
At the fund-raisers, Romney urged his supporters to “speak the truth.”
He said Obama can’t run on his record that includes “back-breaking” unemployment, doubling the deficit, increased health-care costs and his push for higher taxes that are “crushing” small businesses. “Our economy is driven by freedom. [Obama] thinks our economy is driven by government. It’s not,” he said to hearty applause.
The events, including a swank breakfast on the Upper East Side for 620 donors, capped two days of fund-raisers in New York and New Jersey that hauled in $5 million for his run.
“New York is going to help make it happen,” declared Romney at the breakfast event at the opulent 583 Park banquet hall.
Romney yesterday also mingled with high-level donors at an exclusive luncheon at Jet owner Woody Johnson’s Fifth Avenue residence.
“Great day in New York!” a smiling Romney said as he left Johnson’s residence and climbed into his SUV.
After the breakfast, he shook hands with former US Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. Other dignitaries included state GOP chairman Ed Cox, former Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and supermarket magnate John Catsimatides, who is considering running for mayor next year.
Billionaire hedge funder John Paulson, a top Romney donor, was one of the guests who munched on chicken filet at the luncheon hosted by Johnson, sources said.