THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, VIA TELECONFERENCE
2:00 P.M. EST
THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, VIA TELECONFERENCE
MR. STRIKE: Hello, and thank you, everyone, and welcome to this FPC-sponsored teleconference on the Preview of the 2012 South Carolina Primary Election. Today we have Ms. Gina Smith, the veteran political reporter from The State Newspaper in Columbia, who will discuss the state of the race 24 hours before the vote. Gina is only with us for a short period of time, unfortunately, so she is going to make brief remarks and we’ll go then into Q&A. Please keep your questions short and please state your name and publication when you ask a question.
So without further ado, here is Gina. Take it away.
MS. SMITH: Thank you, Andy. Hello, everybody. Sorry that I can’t stay for too long, but it’s a very busy day here in South Carolina. Again, my name is Gina Smith. That’s G-i-n-a, and the last name is S-m-i-t-h. And I am a political reporter for The State Newspaper, the one in Columbia, South Carolina, which is the capital city of South Carolina.
I thought I’d start with a little bit of history about why all eyes are on South Carolina today. Since 1980, the Republican voters of South Carolina have correctly picked the eventual nominee, starting back in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. So South Carolina, much more so than Iowa or New Hampshire, South Carolina has really seen as a good barometer for how Republican voters will cast votes in the general election. We’re also seen as a good barometer for the Republican National Committee on who Republican voters will get behind.
Characteristics of South Carolina that make it a good barometer and also make it different from Iowa and New Hampshire is South Carolina is a very socially conservative state. Republicans in South Carolina care very deeply about issues such as abortion and gay marriage. A large percentage of voters in South Carolina are also evangelical; that is, some people refer to them as born-again Christians. About 60 percent, six-zero percent of voters here, consider themselves evangelicals. So they want to hear candidates talk about their Christian faith. They want to hear – they want a candidate who has similar religious beliefs.
South Carolina is also very fiscally conservative. A lot of people say that the Tea Party – one of the states that really got it going in is South Carolina. South Carolinians like to hear candidates talk about limited government, less government, less taxes. They have a problem with the federal government, quite frankly. They think the federal government is too involved in their lives. They often support states’ rights.
It could go into this mix that the top issue by far here in South Carolina – and we know this because poll after poll after poll has shown it – is the economy. More than in New Hampshire and Iowa, South Carolina is really suffering with economic problems. Our unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, so just barely out of the double digits. We’ve had lots of manufacturing leave the state. Before that we had the textile industry closing down. So lots of unemployed people here in South Carolina who are looking for a candidate who’s going to talk about job creation. How do you bring jobs to South Carolina? How do we put people back to work?
Taking that all into account and looking at where the race stands today – and voters will go the polls starting at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow in South Carolina and the polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. – we’re really seeing a two-man race. You have Mitt Romney, who has pretty consistently since the summer been a frontrunner here in South Carolina. He occasionally has been in second place in some of the polls. For example, when Herman Cain – there was buzz about Herman Cain – Mitt Romney briefly trailed Herman Cain, for example. But consistently since the summer, he’s either been in the number or the number two spot. And Romney is still up there in the top tier.
But Newt Gingrich – just in the past 48 hours, we have seen Newt Gingrich start surging here in South Carolina, and it’s setting up a two-man race. Polling – there are about four polls, four or five polls that came out yesterday. In every single one of them, you see those two separated just by a couple of percentage points. Some had Romney ahead of Gingrich, but just by a tiny bit, and in some polls Gingrich was actually ahead of Romney. So this is a real nail biter in South Carolina. No one knows – I’ve been talking to both of the campaigns today, who are working very hard on the ground here in South Carolina, lots of rallies, lots of TV ads, radio ads. And both camps feel sort of uncertain, quite frankly. They’re not sure who is going to win tomorrow. So lots of excitement.
Rick Santorum is still in the race. He is sort of a second-tier candidate though. South Carolinians take their role of electing – of choosing the eventual nominee very seriously, so electability matters a lot too. And as I’ve talked to some voters about Santorum, they really like him, they love the fact that he has a strong Christian message, they seem to believe he is an honest and good man, but they don’t know if he can go on to win the nomination. So that is really hurting Santorum here in South Carolina.
That’s it for my opening remarks, and I am happy to take any questions you all have at this time.
QUESTION: Hello, good afternoon. [Marta Torres-Ruiz], I work for La Razon newspaper, an affiliation from Spain. I would like to know why Romney has been shrinking on the polls some (inaudible). He doesn’t – he cannot claim that he’s winning in South Carolina or in the rest of the race.
MS. SMITH: Is your question why Romney is making the claims that he’s winning in South Carolina?
QUESTION: Why he cannot close the race. Why he is shrinking and he’s getting weaker and weaker.
MS. SMITH: Gotcha, gotcha. I think one big factor is this Newt Gingrich surge, that I think if Newt Gingrich was not in the race, Mitt Romney would probably be a shoo-in here in South Carolina. But what has happened is we’ve had two debates in South Carolina this past week, and a lot of South Carolina voters are just in the past week tuning into the race. They’ve been busy working and taking care of their kids. Politics is not the top thing on their minds. So they’re just now this week – a lot of voters – paying attention to this race.
And when they look up, what do they see? These two debates, and in both of the debates here in South Carolina, South Carolinians feel that Newt Gringrich just stole the show, that he won it outright. He is serving as a mouthpiece to South Carolinians’ anger, I would say. South Carolinians, the electorate, is angry right now. They’re mad at the federal government. They’re mad at Barack Obama. They’re upset about the unemployment rate. They’re upset about the state of the economy, out of control spending and debt. And when they look on that stage and hear Newt Gingrich wailing on all of those things and doing it with such passion and such vigor, he is their mouthpiece. They see him as a kindred spirit.
In comparison, Mitt Romney is up there and he’s just not as good of a debater, quite frankly. He’s not as skilled as Newt Gingrich is at doing it. And I think the debates have helped Newt and, as you pointed out, made it a little more difficult for Mitt Romney to get a leg up in South Carolina.
QUESTION: I’m [Christina Bergmann] from Deutsche Welle, German International Broadcasting. Thanks for doing this. If the race is such a nail biter, my question is how big is the danger that we’re going to see the same thing as in Iowa, that the race is too close to call or that there is a result that later the result will be reversed? So what is South Carolina doing to prevent that? Thank you.
MS. SMITH: Good question. In Iowa – we have a different process from Iowa. In Iowa they have caucuses, so you have groups of people who are going to high school gymnasiums or to other public buildings, in some cases in very small rural areas, even caucusing in someone’s house. And a lot of times, they’re using paper ballots where, literally, they are just writing the name of the candidate who they want on a piece of paper and handing it over to someone to count. In South Carolina, we do use voting machines, so let’s hope that that will make it a little easier for us to have an electronic trail on who wins. And of course, with machines, you can tabulate a winner a lot faster.
So – but there’s always the possibility that you’re right, that there could be some sort of glitch. Machines break down, and they have to switch over to paper ballots. We’ll have to wait and see. I don’t know if we’re taking – that would be a good question for the election commission here. I’ve not heard of any new steps that are being taken this year as opposed to four years ago to make sure that the process works perfectly. We did not have any problems in 2008. I can tell you that.
QUESTION: It’s [Gulveda Ozgur from the] Turkish news channel, Haberturk. Thank you for doing this. I have a question. You stated that the vast majority of South Carolina is – constitute of – or from evangelicals, and how much do you think Romney’s Mormonism weighs in this race? And as to Gingrich being popular in South Carolina, his second wife’s statement, how much do you think that will affect the choice of candidate?
MS. SMITH: Right. Yes. As you point out, Romney is a Mormon, and a lot of people feel that that hurt Romney here in South Carolina in 2008. He finished in fourth place. But I would say that since 2008, there’s been a lot of talk about the Mormon faith here in South Carolina. I think South Carolinians are feeling a little more comfortable with the fact that he’s a Mormon. And when you listen to Romney speak, he talks very big picture about his faith, about being a man of God, about being a family man who has been married to the same woman for many, many years, that he is a father and a grandfather. So he’s talking about his faith in a way that is acceptable to evangelical voters. Of course, it could still be a problem for him. We won’t know for sure, I guess, until tomorrow.
You also mentioned Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, who last night on ABC there was an interview with her where she claimed that while they were married and Newt Gingrich was having an affair, which he has acknowledged, with his current wife, that she – his ex-wife – says that he asked for an open marriage. And last night in the debate here in Charleston, Gingrich denied that. And that is a big question today. There’s a lot of us talking about how much that ABC interview will sway voters. I think it’s a little too early to say.
If I was going to make a guesstimate as someone who talks to voters a lot, I think South Carolina voters are very aware of Newt Gingrich’s past and that he has a lot of personal baggage and that he has been divorced twice, and he is with his third wife. So my guess is that it’s not going to be a huge problem for Gingrich here just because it is a well-known fact that he has personal baggage. And what the ex-wife was saying last night I think will be seen as details, things that – almost like too much information. We already knew that he had marital issues. This is a level of detail that maybe voters don’t want to hear, don’t want to know. So my prediction is it’s not going to be a huge problem for him here.
QUESTION: Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Dagmar Benesova. I am from World Business Press Online news agency. I had already the same question as the speaker before me, but I would like to ask you also, according to you, what kind of role play the social media in these elections not in South Carolina but also in different states? Thank you very much.
MS. SMITH: Are you talking about the candidates using social media?
QUESTION: Yes. About social media like also Facebook and this kind of new wave communication that in – also about social media also in general. Thank you very much.
MS. SMITH: Yeah. I think social media is getting a lot of use in this campaign, even much more so than just four years ago. Everyone has – all the candidates have websites, a presence on Facebook. The candidates themselves tweet. There are different volunteers and organizers of their campaigns are also on Twitter. It increasingly is – social media is a key component in not only how candidates reach out to voters and supporters, but how they talk to the media, too. I have entire conversations through direct messages on Twitter with representatives from the various campaigns.
QUESTION: Okay. Thank you. So you think that it will influence also the voter decision a lot?
MS. SMITH: I do think – yes. In South Carolina, we’re – this is not a rich state. This is a poor, rural state. There are still a fair number of people who do not have internet access, who are not on Facebook and things like that. But I think when you’re talking about the South Carolinians who are plugged in enough that they’re going to vote tomorrow, these are people who are – probably have in most cases a little bit more money, are plugged into the election stuff, and, yeah, those folks are on the internet and reading their news online and emailing with their friends and helping to form their opinions, and they’re probably forwarding back and forth that ABC interview with Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife that we were just talking about.
QUESTION: Hi. This is Jesse [Walter] with the Asahi Shimbun. Thanks for taking the call today, Gina. My question is actually relating to the unemployment rate in South Carolina and if you feel the attacks on Mitt Romney relating to Bain [Capital] has gained traction there.
MS. SMITH: Great question. Bain Capital, for those of you who don’t know, is a private equity firm that Mitt Romney founded and led for a long time, and there’s been a lot written about two companies in South Carolina that Bain Capital invested in, and ultimately workers were laid off at both of those companies. The South Carolina workers lost their jobs. And it would seem on the surface that this would be a terrific attack on Romney, that this would be very smart of Gingrich to take this approach in a state like South Carolina where so many people are worried about losing their jobs or have lost their jobs. It seems to be having the opposite effect in South Carolina, because we’re such a red state, I guess.
Republican voters believe very much in the ideas of capitalism, of free market. They like to see people be successful and make a lot of money, quite frankly. And I think that’s part of Mitt Romney’s appeal. They see Mitt Romney as the business guy, the guy who has been successful and who has made a lot of money. And when I talk to voters, I have heard from next to no voters that they were put off or offended about Mitt Romney, his time at Bain Capital. Instead they defend Mitt Romney and say, well, of course. This – sometimes when you invest in companies, sometimes those companies prosper, and you’re able to hire more people and make money, and sometimes a company goes under and people lose their jobs. South Carolina is a very entrepreneurial state, too. A lot of people start their own businesses here. So there seems to be an understanding that there is an inherent risk in doing this kind of work. So I do not think that the Bain Capital attacks will hurt Mitt Romney’s chances in South Carolina.
Guys, I probably got time for one more question. I’m sorry. I have to run into a meeting.
QUESTION: Hi, Gina, [Gulveda Ozgur] for Turkish news channel [Haberturk]. I have a question about Romney, following up for the – with the previous question. While Romney keeps refusing posting his tax return when Newt Gingrich actually yesterday posted his, do you think this helps Newt Gingrich for tomorrow? And how much – and do you think that voters in South Carolina don’t require any transparency? I mean, how do they view that?
MS. SMITH: Great question. I think that him not releasing his tax returns does hurt him in South Carolina. Our current governor, Governor Nikki Haley, who won last year, who became governor last year, she ran on a platform of increasing government transparency, making the process of government more open, she released her tax returns to South Carolina voters. Gresham Barrett, who was her competition in the Republican run-off last summer, he released his tax records. So in South Carolina there’s a lot of talk about transparency being a good thing and how we need more of it so that voters can hold elected officials accountable.
So today, as I’ve been talking to voters, yes, that has come up several times. South Carolina voters do seem to want Mitt Romney to turn over those records. And I think Newt Gingrich, going after that last night saying, “Hey, if there’s nothing there, go ahead and put them out if you don’t have anything to hide,” that seems to be resonating with South Carolina voters. I think that is something – I don’t know if it’s enough that someone would not vote for Mitt Romney, but if someone had, say, several other reasons that they were thinking about not voting for Mitt Romney and they added that onto it, it may be enough yet to sway somebody to vote for Newt instead.
But I don’t think anyone in South Carolina or at least not the people I’ve been talking to today – I have not heard anybody say, “I was going to vote for Mitt Romney, but now I’m not voting for him because of this failure on his part to turn over tax returns.”
QUESTION: Thank you.
MS. SMITH: Guys, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And if you all have any more follow-up questions, I’ll do my best to respond to them on email today. And my email address is g-n-s-m-i-t-h@thestate.com. That’s t-h-e-s-t-a-t-e.com.
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MR. STRIKE: Hello, and thank you, everyone, and welcome to this FPC-sponsored teleconference on the Preview of the 2012 South Carolina Primary Election. Today we have Ms. Gina Smith, the veteran political reporter from The State Newspaper in Columbia, who will discuss the state of the race 24 hours before the vote. Gina is only with us for a short period of time, unfortunately, so she is going to make brief remarks and we’ll go then into Q&A. Please keep your questions short and please state your name and publication when you ask a question.
So without further ado, here is Gina. Take it away.
MS. SMITH: Thank you, Andy. Hello, everybody. Sorry that I can’t stay for too long, but it’s a very busy day here in South Carolina. Again, my name is Gina Smith. That’s G-i-n-a, and the last name is S-m-i-t-h. And I am a political reporter for The State Newspaper, the one in Columbia, South Carolina, which is the capital city of South Carolina.
I thought I’d start with a little bit of history about why all eyes are on South Carolina today. Since 1980, the Republican voters of South Carolina have correctly picked the eventual nominee, starting back in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. So South Carolina, much more so than Iowa or New Hampshire, South Carolina has really seen as a good barometer for how Republican voters will cast votes in the general election. We’re also seen as a good barometer for the Republican National Committee on who Republican voters will get behind.
Characteristics of South Carolina that make it a good barometer and also make it different from Iowa and New Hampshire is South Carolina is a very socially conservative state. Republicans in South Carolina care very deeply about issues such as abortion and gay marriage. A large percentage of voters in South Carolina are also evangelical; that is, some people refer to them as born-again Christians. About 60 percent, six-zero percent of voters here, consider themselves evangelicals. So they want to hear candidates talk about their Christian faith. They want to hear – they want a candidate who has similar religious beliefs.
South Carolina is also very fiscally conservative. A lot of people say that the Tea Party – one of the states that really got it going in is South Carolina. South Carolinians like to hear candidates talk about limited government, less government, less taxes. They have a problem with the federal government, quite frankly. They think the federal government is too involved in their lives. They often support states’ rights.
It could go into this mix that the top issue by far here in South Carolina – and we know this because poll after poll after poll has shown it – is the economy. More than in New Hampshire and Iowa, South Carolina is really suffering with economic problems. Our unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, so just barely out of the double digits. We’ve had lots of manufacturing leave the state. Before that we had the textile industry closing down. So lots of unemployed people here in South Carolina who are looking for a candidate who’s going to talk about job creation. How do you bring jobs to South Carolina? How do we put people back to work?
Taking that all into account and looking at where the race stands today – and voters will go the polls starting at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow in South Carolina and the polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. – we’re really seeing a two-man race. You have Mitt Romney, who has pretty consistently since the summer been a frontrunner here in South Carolina. He occasionally has been in second place in some of the polls. For example, when Herman Cain – there was buzz about Herman Cain – Mitt Romney briefly trailed Herman Cain, for example. But consistently since the summer, he’s either been in the number or the number two spot. And Romney is still up there in the top tier.
But Newt Gingrich – just in the past 48 hours, we have seen Newt Gingrich start surging here in South Carolina, and it’s setting up a two-man race. Polling – there are about four polls, four or five polls that came out yesterday. In every single one of them, you see those two separated just by a couple of percentage points. Some had Romney ahead of Gingrich, but just by a tiny bit, and in some polls Gingrich was actually ahead of Romney. So this is a real nail biter in South Carolina. No one knows – I’ve been talking to both of the campaigns today, who are working very hard on the ground here in South Carolina, lots of rallies, lots of TV ads, radio ads. And both camps feel sort of uncertain, quite frankly. They’re not sure who is going to win tomorrow. So lots of excitement.
Rick Santorum is still in the race. He is sort of a second-tier candidate though. South Carolinians take their role of electing – of choosing the eventual nominee very seriously, so electability matters a lot too. And as I’ve talked to some voters about Santorum, they really like him, they love the fact that he has a strong Christian message, they seem to believe he is an honest and good man, but they don’t know if he can go on to win the nomination. So that is really hurting Santorum here in South Carolina.
That’s it for my opening remarks, and I am happy to take any questions you all have at this time.
QUESTION: Hello, good afternoon. [Marta Torres-Ruiz], I work for La Razon newspaper, an affiliation from Spain. I would like to know why Romney has been shrinking on the polls some (inaudible). He doesn’t – he cannot claim that he’s winning in South Carolina or in the rest of the race.
MS. SMITH: Is your question why Romney is making the claims that he’s winning in South Carolina?
QUESTION: Why he cannot close the race. Why he is shrinking and he’s getting weaker and weaker.
MS. SMITH: Gotcha, gotcha. I think one big factor is this Newt Gingrich surge, that I think if Newt Gingrich was not in the race, Mitt Romney would probably be a shoo-in here in South Carolina. But what has happened is we’ve had two debates in South Carolina this past week, and a lot of South Carolina voters are just in the past week tuning into the race. They’ve been busy working and taking care of their kids. Politics is not the top thing on their minds. So they’re just now this week – a lot of voters – paying attention to this race.
And when they look up, what do they see? These two debates, and in both of the debates here in South Carolina, South Carolinians feel that Newt Gringrich just stole the show, that he won it outright. He is serving as a mouthpiece to South Carolinians’ anger, I would say. South Carolinians, the electorate, is angry right now. They’re mad at the federal government. They’re mad at Barack Obama. They’re upset about the unemployment rate. They’re upset about the state of the economy, out of control spending and debt. And when they look on that stage and hear Newt Gingrich wailing on all of those things and doing it with such passion and such vigor, he is their mouthpiece. They see him as a kindred spirit.
In comparison, Mitt Romney is up there and he’s just not as good of a debater, quite frankly. He’s not as skilled as Newt Gingrich is at doing it. And I think the debates have helped Newt and, as you pointed out, made it a little more difficult for Mitt Romney to get a leg up in South Carolina.
QUESTION: I’m [Christina Bergmann] from Deutsche Welle, German International Broadcasting. Thanks for doing this. If the race is such a nail biter, my question is how big is the danger that we’re going to see the same thing as in Iowa, that the race is too close to call or that there is a result that later the result will be reversed? So what is South Carolina doing to prevent that? Thank you.
MS. SMITH: Good question. In Iowa – we have a different process from Iowa. In Iowa they have caucuses, so you have groups of people who are going to high school gymnasiums or to other public buildings, in some cases in very small rural areas, even caucusing in someone’s house. And a lot of times, they’re using paper ballots where, literally, they are just writing the name of the candidate who they want on a piece of paper and handing it over to someone to count. In South Carolina, we do use voting machines, so let’s hope that that will make it a little easier for us to have an electronic trail on who wins. And of course, with machines, you can tabulate a winner a lot faster.
So – but there’s always the possibility that you’re right, that there could be some sort of glitch. Machines break down, and they have to switch over to paper ballots. We’ll have to wait and see. I don’t know if we’re taking – that would be a good question for the election commission here. I’ve not heard of any new steps that are being taken this year as opposed to four years ago to make sure that the process works perfectly. We did not have any problems in 2008. I can tell you that.
QUESTION: It’s [Gulveda Ozgur from the] Turkish news channel, Haberturk. Thank you for doing this. I have a question. You stated that the vast majority of South Carolina is – constitute of – or from evangelicals, and how much do you think Romney’s Mormonism weighs in this race? And as to Gingrich being popular in South Carolina, his second wife’s statement, how much do you think that will affect the choice of candidate?
MS. SMITH: Right. Yes. As you point out, Romney is a Mormon, and a lot of people feel that that hurt Romney here in South Carolina in 2008. He finished in fourth place. But I would say that since 2008, there’s been a lot of talk about the Mormon faith here in South Carolina. I think South Carolinians are feeling a little more comfortable with the fact that he’s a Mormon. And when you listen to Romney speak, he talks very big picture about his faith, about being a man of God, about being a family man who has been married to the same woman for many, many years, that he is a father and a grandfather. So he’s talking about his faith in a way that is acceptable to evangelical voters. Of course, it could still be a problem for him. We won’t know for sure, I guess, until tomorrow.
You also mentioned Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, who last night on ABC there was an interview with her where she claimed that while they were married and Newt Gingrich was having an affair, which he has acknowledged, with his current wife, that she – his ex-wife – says that he asked for an open marriage. And last night in the debate here in Charleston, Gingrich denied that. And that is a big question today. There’s a lot of us talking about how much that ABC interview will sway voters. I think it’s a little too early to say.
If I was going to make a guesstimate as someone who talks to voters a lot, I think South Carolina voters are very aware of Newt Gingrich’s past and that he has a lot of personal baggage and that he has been divorced twice, and he is with his third wife. So my guess is that it’s not going to be a huge problem for Gingrich here just because it is a well-known fact that he has personal baggage. And what the ex-wife was saying last night I think will be seen as details, things that – almost like too much information. We already knew that he had marital issues. This is a level of detail that maybe voters don’t want to hear, don’t want to know. So my prediction is it’s not going to be a huge problem for him here.
QUESTION: Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Dagmar Benesova. I am from World Business Press Online news agency. I had already the same question as the speaker before me, but I would like to ask you also, according to you, what kind of role play the social media in these elections not in South Carolina but also in different states? Thank you very much.
MS. SMITH: Are you talking about the candidates using social media?
QUESTION: Yes. About social media like also Facebook and this kind of new wave communication that in – also about social media also in general. Thank you very much.
MS. SMITH: Yeah. I think social media is getting a lot of use in this campaign, even much more so than just four years ago. Everyone has – all the candidates have websites, a presence on Facebook. The candidates themselves tweet. There are different volunteers and organizers of their campaigns are also on Twitter. It increasingly is – social media is a key component in not only how candidates reach out to voters and supporters, but how they talk to the media, too. I have entire conversations through direct messages on Twitter with representatives from the various campaigns.
QUESTION: Okay. Thank you. So you think that it will influence also the voter decision a lot?
MS. SMITH: I do think – yes. In South Carolina, we’re – this is not a rich state. This is a poor, rural state. There are still a fair number of people who do not have internet access, who are not on Facebook and things like that. But I think when you’re talking about the South Carolinians who are plugged in enough that they’re going to vote tomorrow, these are people who are – probably have in most cases a little bit more money, are plugged into the election stuff, and, yeah, those folks are on the internet and reading their news online and emailing with their friends and helping to form their opinions, and they’re probably forwarding back and forth that ABC interview with Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife that we were just talking about.
QUESTION: Hi. This is Jesse [Walter] with the Asahi Shimbun. Thanks for taking the call today, Gina. My question is actually relating to the unemployment rate in South Carolina and if you feel the attacks on Mitt Romney relating to Bain [Capital] has gained traction there.
MS. SMITH: Great question. Bain Capital, for those of you who don’t know, is a private equity firm that Mitt Romney founded and led for a long time, and there’s been a lot written about two companies in South Carolina that Bain Capital invested in, and ultimately workers were laid off at both of those companies. The South Carolina workers lost their jobs. And it would seem on the surface that this would be a terrific attack on Romney, that this would be very smart of Gingrich to take this approach in a state like South Carolina where so many people are worried about losing their jobs or have lost their jobs. It seems to be having the opposite effect in South Carolina, because we’re such a red state, I guess.
Republican voters believe very much in the ideas of capitalism, of free market. They like to see people be successful and make a lot of money, quite frankly. And I think that’s part of Mitt Romney’s appeal. They see Mitt Romney as the business guy, the guy who has been successful and who has made a lot of money. And when I talk to voters, I have heard from next to no voters that they were put off or offended about Mitt Romney, his time at Bain Capital. Instead they defend Mitt Romney and say, well, of course. This – sometimes when you invest in companies, sometimes those companies prosper, and you’re able to hire more people and make money, and sometimes a company goes under and people lose their jobs. South Carolina is a very entrepreneurial state, too. A lot of people start their own businesses here. So there seems to be an understanding that there is an inherent risk in doing this kind of work. So I do not think that the Bain Capital attacks will hurt Mitt Romney’s chances in South Carolina.
Guys, I probably got time for one more question. I’m sorry. I have to run into a meeting.
QUESTION: Hi, Gina, [Gulveda Ozgur] for Turkish news channel [Haberturk]. I have a question about Romney, following up for the – with the previous question. While Romney keeps refusing posting his tax return when Newt Gingrich actually yesterday posted his, do you think this helps Newt Gingrich for tomorrow? And how much – and do you think that voters in South Carolina don’t require any transparency? I mean, how do they view that?
MS. SMITH: Great question. I think that him not releasing his tax returns does hurt him in South Carolina. Our current governor, Governor Nikki Haley, who won last year, who became governor last year, she ran on a platform of increasing government transparency, making the process of government more open, she released her tax returns to South Carolina voters. Gresham Barrett, who was her competition in the Republican run-off last summer, he released his tax records. So in South Carolina there’s a lot of talk about transparency being a good thing and how we need more of it so that voters can hold elected officials accountable.
So today, as I’ve been talking to voters, yes, that has come up several times. South Carolina voters do seem to want Mitt Romney to turn over those records. And I think Newt Gingrich, going after that last night saying, “Hey, if there’s nothing there, go ahead and put them out if you don’t have anything to hide,” that seems to be resonating with South Carolina voters. I think that is something – I don’t know if it’s enough that someone would not vote for Mitt Romney, but if someone had, say, several other reasons that they were thinking about not voting for Mitt Romney and they added that onto it, it may be enough yet to sway somebody to vote for Newt instead.
But I don’t think anyone in South Carolina or at least not the people I’ve been talking to today – I have not heard anybody say, “I was going to vote for Mitt Romney, but now I’m not voting for him because of this failure on his part to turn over tax returns.”
QUESTION: Thank you.
MS. SMITH: Guys, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And if you all have any more follow-up questions, I’ll do my best to respond to them on email today. And my email address is g-n-s-m-i-t-h@thestate.com. That’s t-h-e-s-t-a-t-e.com.
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