BLUFFTON, S.C. - As a leveraged buyout specialist and management consultant, Mitt Romney sometimes recommended that companies slash jobs, calling it a bitter medicine that would eventually help the firms grow.
Now, as a presidential candidate, he has a very different message. Fresh off his win in Michigan, he is vowing to "fight for every job" in some of America's oldest and most-battered industries - autos, textiles, furniture-making.
"I'm not willing to declare defeat on any industry where we can be competitive," Romney told a group of senior citizens yesterday at the Sun City Hilton Head retirement community. "I'm going to fight for every job."
As the country teeters toward recession, the emphasis on jobs appears to be taking hold as Romney's central pitch to voters, supplanting more traditional Republican issues such as cutting spending and taxes and opposing abortion. Advisers say Romney found his voice by pledging to bring jobs to Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate.
Romney's jobs message could also find a receptive audience in South Carolina, which holds the first-in-the-South primary on Saturday. The state had the nation's fourth-highest unemployment rate, 5.9 percent in November, and has lost thousands of textile and furniture jobs.
But Romney's pledge to fight for jobs is also drawing increased scrutiny from his rivals, some of whom accused him yesterday of offering false promises to voters.
"Everybody was flocking up there to Michigan and promising, in effect . . . the federal government was going to come in there and bail the entire state out," Fred Thompson told a crowd in Laurens, S.C., yesterday, according to ABC News. "Now, they said it with a straight face and apparently it worked for some of them. That's no way to get elected president on things you could not - and should not - deliver."
A senior strategist for John McCain accused Romney of winning the Michigan primary by "pandering" to voters and said his proposal to spend $20 billion on automotive sciences was a "bailout" for the auto industry.
Romney, however, said he was not trying to sell voters on unrealistically sunny plans for American manufacturing.
"Can I guarantee that we'll be able to protect every industry and every job and be successful in keeping every job? I don't think any person can make that guarantee," Romney told reporters in Bluffton. "But I can guarantee that I'll fight to do my best, and that when I see industries in trouble, that I'll try and find ways to strengthen that industry."
Romney often tells voters about his job-creation successes at Bain Capital, the Boston investment firm he headed from 1984 to 1999. Yesterday, he told the Bluffton seniors about investing $650,000 in Staples in 1986 and watching it grow from a single store in Brighton to a national office supply chain with 80,000 employees. Other times, he has talked about helping to grow the Domino's Pizza chain.
Kick-starting companies "is what I do," Romney told the seniors.
"It is how I spent 25 years in the business world and I will use every ounce of my learning and perspective and all the people I've met and known to try to strengthen the economy of this great land."
But as Bain Capital tried to turn around companies and turn a profit, it also took some harsher actions that resulted in layoffs. Several companies each shed dozens of jobs during restructuring.
In 1992, the firm acquired American Pad & Paper, then borrowed heavily through Ampad, which bought other companies in the same industry to expand revenues and cut costs.
By 1999, Ampad's debt reached nearly $400 million, and it plunged into bankruptcy. Workers lost jobs, including 185 from a plant in Buffalo, N.Y., and 200 who were fired in Indiana. Bain Capital and its investors ultimately made more than $100 million on the deal.
"There are layoffs when companies get in trouble," Romney said yesterday, speaking generally. "But typically when an executive or a person leading an enterprise has layoffs, it's with the hope of rebuilding the enterprise, growing again, and ultimately hiring people back."
Romney made clear that, in addition to being good policy, he saw his jobs message as a way to distinguish himself to distinguish himself from his rivals with longer experience in government and to highlight his call for an outsider to fix Washington and its inability to solve problems such as illegal immigration and dependence on foreign oil.
"You've got Senator McCain who is a national hero, you've got Rudy Giuliani who is America's mayor, you've got Governor Huckabee who's a very well-spoken and entertaining individual, you've got Fred Thompson who is a senator and a charming actor and then you've got a guy like myself, who has spent their life in the private sector," he said yesterday.
In Bluffton, however, the seniors listened silently as Romney talked about fighting for jobs and burst into the most applause when he vowed to end illegal immigration.
Even as he stumped across South Carolina yesterday, he also sought to lower expectations.
Romney said yesterday he does not expect to win, aware that a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby tracking poll released yesterday showed him at 13 percent, behind McCain at 29 percent and Huckabee with 23 percent.
"This is a state I'd expect Senator McCain has pretty well wrapped up," Romney said.
He said he is instead focusing on Nevada, where he plans to campaign today and tomorrow. He could find an opening there, and the state awards 31 delegates to South Carolina's 24. The state's caucuses are also on Saturday, but no major Republican candidate has appeared there in two months, only Ron Paul has aired television ads.
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.
