 |
| Jim Heath interviews Mitt Romney before Ohio’s presidential primary |
After my interview with Rick Santorum aired, we heard from the Romney campaign that he would be available for an exclusive sit-down on February 29th, the day after the Michigan primary. Romney came to Ohio trying to keep his campaign focused on jobs and the economy, but clearly social issues, with the Blunt Amendment scheduled to be voted on that week, were still front-and-center
We were told the interview could go up to ten minutes and I prepared a series of questions, with help from producer Rochelle Young, as we made the drive from Columbus to Bexley, home of Capital University. My strategy with such limited time was simple: Cover a lot of ground fast. My hope was to get his answers to questions on everything from the economy to healthcare, contraception, his opponents, Super PACs, his Mormon faith, and why he wasn’t viewed as very likable. It was an aggressive set of questions, but doable because unlike others—Barack Obama comes to mind—Romney never attempted to filibuster every question.
Romney entered the room and as we sat down, I asked if he had gotten any sleep following the Michigan results the previous night. “Yeah, I did okay, it was the night before that was tougher,” he laughed. We then chitchatted about how much campaigning he was likely to do in Ohio if he won the nomination. Presidential candidates love to campaign at Ohio State, I told him, where 30,000 to 40,000 supporters can show up. “They hope,” Romney quickly added with a laugh.
Now five and-a-half minutes into the interview, I mentioned my earlier conversation with Santorum and asked Romney: “He has brought contraception into this campaign, the issue of birth control and contraception. Blunt-Rubio is being debated this week that deals with allowing employers to ban female contraception. Have you taken a position on it? He says he’s for that, and we’ll talk about Personhood in a minute, but have you taken a position?”
Without the slightest hesitation Romney answered: “I’m not for the bill. But look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I’m not going there.”
“Are you surprised he went there?” I asked.
“I’ve made it very clear when I was being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos in a debate a while ago that contraception is working just fine, let’s leave it alone.”
So what about the Personhood Amendment, which Santorum had at least conceptually endorsed, I followed up.
“We had a provision in my state that said life began at conception, and that’s a provision I protected. The legislature passed a bill saying that no longer would life be determined to begin at conception and I vetoed that. So we can have a provision that describes life beginning, in fact when it begins, while at the same time allowing people to have contraceptives.”
And that was that.
The interview continued for another five minutes. I asked Romney why middle class voters had been struggling with his candidacy. He leaned back and crossed his legs, slightly irritated by the question, and said: “Actually, they haven’t been struggling with my candidacy. I know that’s the narrative that some in the media like to portray, but let’s look at the numbers. I tied in Iowa, got more votes than Ronald Reagan in New Hampshire, won in Florida, won in Nevada, won in Arizona, won in Michigan. So it’s gone pretty darn well.” The answer avoided the reality that many conservatives were struggling with Romney’s candidacy, thus allowing an underfunded and unknown candidate like Santorum—who had been defeated in his last reelection campaign in Pennsylvania by eighteen points—to emerge as a strong challenger.
So again, “Who is Mitt Romney?” I asked.
 |
| The interview would create national news |
“My favorite things? Being with the grandkids. Sports I like to watch: baseball, football. I like water skiing, you know, as a boy in Michigan on the Great Lakes, I was able to get out as a kid and water ski with my dad. My favorite TV show? Modern Family. It probably keeps the biggest smile on my face.”
I mentioned a recent quote by state representative Jay Hottinger, a Romney supporter, calling his Mormon faith the “elephant in the room” as the reason why the primary process was taking so long. Romney said we had discussed his faith four years earlier and, “I don’t have anything new to add.”
We then shook hands for a social media picture and sat and talked so that the photographers could get some cut-away shots to be used in promos. At no time did Romney mention the Blunt Amendment question for a clarification, nor did his staff, who had stood nearby and listened to every word.
As we stood up to say goodbye, one of Romney’s staff members came over and asked why I had brought up the Mormon issue. I said it was in context to the overwhelming number of evangelical voters who had supported Santorum the day before in Michigan.
Again, there was no talk of Blunt-Rubio.
People have asked me why I didn’t follow up or ask for a clarification to his “I’m not for the bill” response. The truth is it didn’t particularly surprise me. It certainly surprised me less than his answer of Modern Family to my question about his favorite television show. Romney had not mentioned the Blunt Amendment in any previous interview, but my thought was that his opposition signaled he was thinking beyond the GOP primary fight and ahead to the tough battle against Obama in Ohio in the fall. His opposition to the Blunt-Rubio provisions would signal to women and Independents that he was just as tired of this contraception issue as they were. And it was no big surprise that Romney was moderating on a social issue, after all he had already changed his positions on everything from abortion to mandated healthcare.
On the drive back to the station I told my colleagues that Romney had certainly made news with us today. The 5 p.m. producer slotted me in the top of the newscast to be on set with the anchors to discuss Romney’s big “pivot to the center” on the contraception issue. As we neared the station I started logging the interview and at 12:53 p.m. tweeted out:
“ALERT: Mitt Romney says he would not vote for senate bill which would allow employers to deny coverage for birth control.”
Within seconds there were dozens of re-tweets from national reporters and political operatives. When I arrived back at the station, our web manager Don Taylor came running up to me. “We have nothing for the web to direct the national press to, get me something as soon as possible!” He then turned and rushed away saying he had the BBC on hold.
Within minutes Greg Sargent, a reporter with the Washington Post, called me for details and put the story up on the Post’s website. At mid-afternoon, I was on the Ohio News Network set discussing how Romney was moderating his message with an eye on November.
At about this same time, Romney called into the Howie Carr show on WRKO radio in Boston. Carr, a conservative talk show host, asked him about it and Romney said: “Of course I support the Blunt Amendment. I thought he was talking about some state law that prevented people from getting contraception. So I talked about contraceptives and so forth. I really misunderstood the question.”
By 5 o’clock I was live on the 10TV set discussing how the story I broke had evolved. Romney now supported the Blunt Amendment and claimed he thought I was asking about an Ohio law. The Romney camp and his supporters online went into overdrive placing the blame squarely with me and my “confusing” question, even though Romney himself said he heard Blunt-Rubio and associated it with “some state law.”
Our newsroom was buzzing. CBS News called and wanted the exchange for their nightly news. The Associated Press put it out on the wire, which is the equivalent of hitting every newsroom computer in America. Laura Bassett with Huffington Post had her story up quickly. Hardball with Chris Matthews led the show with it. Within an hour it was all over the place.
As I watched this tornado unfold, I sat back and was in awe of how quickly an issue can go viral nationwide. I felt a bit helpless being ground zero on this incident and having absolutely no control over the proliferation of it. The interview, and Romney’s retraction of his answer, was now the top story on cable news and websites, small and large, across the country. People were also weighing in on Facebook and Twitter by the groves.
My general manager Tom Griesdorn was ecstatic that the highest-rated station in central Ohio was in the middle of the national discussion. In the coming days, GQ would place me on their Top Five political “Power List” and the Washington Post awarded me with their “Best Super Tuesday” Twitter ranking. Weeks later, Griesdorn awarded me with “Employee of the Month.”
The accolades were great, but privately I was very concerned I had burned a bridge with the Romney campaign. If that were the case I would be ineffective—essentially cut off—covering the presidential race in the fall. Before the interview aired that night, I called Ohio Republican Party spokesman Chris Maloney and Romney’s national spokesman Ryan Williams and made clear it had not been my intent to trip up their candidate. There had been plenty of time for those who had been in the room and heard the question and answer to have requested a clarification.
The interview aired in its entirety on our prime time show that evening and I ended the program with this note: “I’ve enjoyed covering politics and politicians for more than a dozen years. I’ve never played gotcha journalism, I have complete respect for the men and women who enter the political arena, battle it out, put up with a lot, and still manage to get things done. I like Governor Romney. Today was my third sit-down interview with him. I’ve always found him to be engaging, polite, and honest. Today I asked the governor about a bill, explained it, and asked him about his position on it. His answer was definitive and we moved on. I believe the question was clear, the governor now says it was not, and that’s all it is. The interview is now history and you can decide what, if any, importance it has on your vote this Tuesday.”
 |
| Clip of Romney interview on The Daily Show |
That night, Jon Stewart played the clip from the interview on The Daily Show and quipped: “The thing’s only a week old and Mitt Romney’s already taken two positions on it. And he took the two positions within three-and-a-half hours of each other!”
I had missed the show but got a text from my twenty-four-year-old niece Mallory, “Uncle Jim you were just on THE DAILY SHOW! Of all the accomplishments in my broadcasting career, The Daily Show had finally made me relevant with the youngsters in the family!
The following morning during a live appearance on C-SPAN I told viewers, “This question came up about halfway through the interview. Governor Romney was very definitive in his response. I knew in the back of my mind we had made news, but honestly here we are in Ohio—no Republican candidate in the history of our nation has won the White House without Ohio—so in the back of my mind, while I thought it was unusual, I thought he was doing a pivot to the center knowing that Republicans are struggling now with women voters.”
That same day Rick Santorum, campaigning in Georgia, had a field day with the interview telling supporters: “We saw an insight into what’s in the gut of Governor Romney yesterday. He was asked a question about the Blunt amendment… When Gov. Romney was asked that question, his knee-jerk reaction was, ‘Oh, I can’t be for it.’ Well, then after his consultants talk to him, he said, ‘Well, I didn’t understand the question.’ Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. If I was asked that question, my gut reaction would be, ‘You stand for the First Amendment; you stand for freedom of religion.’”
The interview became immortalized in the book Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. On page 282 they wrote: “The next morning, Romney flew to Ohio, where he sat down for a local TV interview… ‘Blunt-Rubio is being debated, I believe later this week,’ the interviewer asked Romney, confusingly.”
ABC News political director Rick Klein was a guest on my show the following Sunday and said he didn’t find my question to Romney “confusing” at all: “This question didn’t come from out of left field. You set it up, you didn’t just throw a name or a number out there at him and ask him to respond and he came out against it. So there was something specific in his mind and clearly he didn’t know what it was and/or he got it wrong the first time and it wasn’t accurately stating his own position.”
Klein and I also discussed how Romney could have heard “Blunt-Rubio” and been so emphatic that he opposed anything associated with two of his biggest supporters. “He shocked a lot of people with that answer and it questioned a couple things. One is, did he really misunderstand it, or did he just get whacked by folks on the right and have to change his position? If he did just misunderstand the question, was he just not paying attention? Because this Blunt Amendment is no small deal—it’s being voted on in the United States Senate—it’s a very big deal and very high profile and it’s something everyone on the right are intensely focused on.”
With the benefit of hindsight, I now believe Romney was on mental cruise control, relaxed talking to me, just another in a long line of TV journalists. He may have been thinking about his next speech, or the Michigan win, or a combination of a million things. Blunt-Rubio went inside his head when I said it, but didn’t process in his mind and he missed it.
 |
| Jim Heath interviews Mitt Romney later in Ohio |
Three months later, Maloney called and told me that despite “some concern” in Boston, I could interview Romney again on board his campaign bus in Newark, Ohio.
I have to give Romney and his team credit here. Many politicians and their staff hold grudges that can last for years. From my experience, Romney is just not a vengeful guy.
He had a job to do, and so did I.
Keep reading Front Row Seat at the Circus!