DES MOINES, Iowa — Newt Gingrich got weepy on the campaign trail yesterday when talking about his late mother in front of a crowd full of moms in a coffee shop.
Gingrich wiped tears from his eye when pollster Frank Luntz, who has known and worked with Gingrich for years, asked him to talk about his late mother, who died of brain cancer in 2003.
“I get teary-eyed every time we sing Christmas carols,” Gingrich said as he began to choke up inside Java Joe’s coffee house in Des Moines, where his daughter seated in the front row handed him tissues.
“My mother sang in the choir and loved singing in the choir. And I don’t know if I should admit this, but when I was very young she made me sing in the choir and we had pictures of me at a very young age singing in the choir,” he recalled in a rare emotional display.
Rival Mitt Romney took a dig at Gingrich’s mini-breakdown at a New Hampshire campaign stop after an audience shouted “Don’t cry!” as he talked about his own parents.
“I won’t cry,” Romney responded knowingly as the crowd laughed. “No, no, no. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of in that regard.”