Remember when former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney went to a call center of conservative faithful in Ohio, as volunteers were dialing on behalf of the efforts to save SB 5, the state’s new union-busting bill? And then when asked by reporters, said he wasn’t going to take a position on the issue?
Well, that was yesterday.
Today it appears Romney does have a position: he supports Gov. John Kasich’s efforts to curtail public employee unions in the name of tightening Ohio’s budget. Romney said as much at an event in Virginia, as reported by NBC’s Mark Murray and the Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner.
The Romney campaign confirmed the account, and sent along the video which you can watch below. When a reporter asked about Romney’s response to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s attacks on him over his non-support of SB 5, he went straight for it.
“Oh, I’m sorry if I created any confusion in that regard, I fully support Gov. Kasich’s—I think it’s called Question 2 in Ohio,” Romney said. “But what I was referring to was I know there were other ballot questions there in Ohio and I wasn’t taking a position on those. One of them for instance, relates to healthcare and mandates, I’ve said that that should be up to individual states. I, of course, took my state in one direction. They may want to go in a different direction. I don’t want to tell them what I think they ought to do in that regard, that’s up to them. So, it was with regards to that issue that I didn’t want to make a commitment. And I didn’t even know what their Question 1 is, if there is a Question 1. I don’t know what that one is.
“But with regards to Question 2, which is the collective bargaining question, I am 110% behind Governor Kasich and in support of that question,” he said.
Watch the exchange here:
Update: Perry camp spokesman Mark Miner responds to TPM’s request for comment: “Mitt Romney may have set a new record in the amount of time it has taken him to flip-flop on an issue. And it’s still early in the day.”
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Editor of TPM Media’s PollTracker. He graduated from Beloit College (WI) and began working in politics before getting an M.A. in magazine journalism from New York University, where he interned at TPM and the website of The New Yorker.
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