Democrats attack Mitt Romney with Spanish-language ads

By Matt Viser, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON - Democrats are launching a new $4 million ad campaign on Monday in an attempt to cast Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch wealthy businessman who doesn’t understand the concerns of one of the fastest growing segments of the electorate, Hispanics.

The Spanish-language ads, sponsored by the SEIU and Priorities USA Action, will start running this week and will go throughout the summer. They will air on television and radio stations in Colorado, Nevada, and Florida - all vital swing states with large populations of Hispanics.

It marks a major new push by one of the largest labor unions, the Service Employes International Union, and the super PAC supporting Obama, Priorities USA Action.

The ad campaign - called “Mitt Romney: En Sus Propias Palabras” (or, “Mitt Romney: In His Own Words”) - uses several gaffes from Romney over the past year.

In one clip, Romney says, “You can focus on the very poor. That’s not my focus.” (He had been trying to argue that the focus should be the middle class and not the wealthy, who have means, or the poor, who have “an ample safety net.”)

The other clip uses a quote from last year in which Romney told a group at a cafe in Orlando, “I’ll also tell my story. I’m also unemployed.”

Voters are interspersed throughout the 30-second spots, with one female saying, “What about us? He’s not thinking about us.” A male says, “It’s easy for him to say that since he doesn’t have the same necessities as us.” Across the screen text flashes, “Mitt Romney made millions of dollars leaving thousands of people without work.”

The ad comes after a difficult week for both President Obama’s campaign and for the labor movement, which lost a high-profile battle in trying to recall Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

It also comes as Romney is trying to ramp up his own activities in courting Hispanics. But Romney has yet to air many ads targeted Spanish-speakers, and the effort by the Democrats may force him to react soon.

“This ad is part of a broader effort to ensure Latino voters know the stakes in this election,” Brandon Davis, national political director for the SEIU, said in a statement. “The contrast could not be more clear. President Obama is committed to focusing on good job creation ... and creating a fair pathway to citizenship for immigrants. Mitt Romney’s policies would be detrimental to job growth, hurt Latino workers chances of finding a job that gives fair pay for a day’s work, and help the very richest simply get that much richer.”