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Former Bain Capital Employees to Speak at DNC, Obama Campaign Officials Say
September 03, 2012
At least two former employees of Bain Capital are scheduled to speak out against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Democratic National Convention this week in Charlotte, senior Obama campaign officials confirmed to Fox News Monday.
The Obama campaign has spent millions of dollars on attack ads focusing on various companies that were forced to close after Bain Capital -- Romney's former private equity firm -- took them over. Democrats have not revealed the identities of the speakers or when they will be addressing the convention.
More from Fox News:
A knowledgeable source told Fox News that possible speakers could include Steve Pagliuca -- managing partner at Bain Capital, considered the unofficial head of the firm. Pagliuca is a co-owner of the Boston Celtics who ran for the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy and lost in the Democratic primary to Martha Coakley in 2010.Another possible speaker is Jon Lavine, an Obama campaign bundler and very senior member of the firm. Matt Levin, also a partner at Bain, is said to be very active in Democratic politics as well and could be included in the program.
The Bain attack from Obama supporters seemed to subside a bit after the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action produced an ad that linked Romney to the cancer death of the wife of a worker who was let go from a Bain-owned steel mill.
However, Huffington Post reports that senior Obama campaign officials said only employees of former Bain-managed companies would be speaking at the DNC.
"An earlier report suggested that officials with Bain Capital itself would be speaking at the Democratic convention, raising the specter of former Romney business partners criticizing his private sector record in primetime speaking slots. But the campaign official said that the collars on the stage would be blue, not white," according to the report.
The mystery speakers will talk about the inner-workings of the "private equity world" while likely questioning the ethics of Romney's former company while he was CEO, according to HuffPo.
Instead of running from the accusations, Romney in recent weeks has been touting the successes of Bain Capital, saying "In America, we celebrate success." In his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Romney called his former company a "great American success story."
Romney rattled off a list of very successful Bain companies including Staples, The Sports Authority, an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons, and Steel Dynamics.
"These are American success stories. And yet the centerpiece of the president's entire re-election campaign is attacking success," Romney said in his speech. "In America, we celebrate success, we don't apologize for it. We weren't always successful at Bain. But no one ever is in the real world of business. That's what this president doesn't seem to understand. Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving."
Watch some of Romney's remarks from his RNC speech via Fox News here:
Either way, by lining up Bain speakers for the DNC, the Obama campaign is confirming that they are not done attacking Romney's time at the company, depicting him as an out-of-touch elitist who allowed Americans to lose their jobs in order to line his own pockets.
"The Romney camp, though, is betting the attacks are backfiring and will make small business owners even more apprehensive about Obama and his policies," Fox News reports.
Front page image by Justine Schiavo/The Boston Globe/Getty Images.
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