This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 19, 2012 - The two Missourians who are closest to the campaign of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney express confidence that he is thoroughly vetting potential running mates, but say they are not involved – and are in the dark about the choice.
“They’ve been very careful to go through this [vetting] process and to do it in a thoughtful way,” former Sen. Jim Talent, a senior Romney adviser, told reporters Thursday.
He said the former Massachusetts governor has told allies that he “is going to pick somebody who, in his opinion, is fully capable of being president and carrying out the policies as laid out in the campaign.”
But Talent said he doesn’t know when the VP announcement will be made or who will be chosen. Another Romney ally, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. – who spearheaded Mitt Romney's endorsement efforts on Capitol Hill – also claims to be in the dark.
“I talk to [Romney] quite a bit and I talk to them at least once or twice a week at [Romney campaign] headquarters -- mostly about issues," Blunt told the Beacon in a recent interview. “But I have not volunteered to be involved in the vice presidential discussion of whom he should pick, nor have I been asked" to give advice about a running mate.
While Blunt may be acting coy about any advice he had given, it seems hard to believe that Romney's vetters would not have asked him about a couple of the GOP senators often mentioned in Romney's veepstakes: Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla. As the vice chair of the Senate GOP conference, Blunt knows both of them well.
Washington insiders tend to cite Portman and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty as being on Romney’s likely veep shortlist. Others often mentioned are Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc. Another name floated recently was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, although she seems to be a long shot.
A New York Times article this week outlined the exhaustive process by which Romney, his wife Ann, and key aides have been assessing the potential running mates. Those include personal meetings, joint campaign swings, reviews of video footage, detailed questionnaires with about 80 queries, and close looks at their financial and personal lives.
“The Romney campaign has cloaked its vetting of possible vice-presidential nominees in layers of secrecy, so much so that it is even considering using a decoy — two sets of planes, two rollout locations, for example — to try to keep the selection from leaking out,” the Times reported.
While several news outlets have reported that Romney and key aides are determined to be more thorough than Sen. John McCain’s campaign staff was in vetting former Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, Talent said he didn’t think that made much difference in the vetting approach of Romney, who is known to be thorough and businesslike.
“Knowing Gov. Romney, I think he’d be going through the same [running-mate vetting] process he’s going through, regardless of what happened in 2008,” said Talent. He added that Romney, whom McCain also had considered as a potential running mate, “was very supportive” of the McCain-Palin ticket.
Others have warned about Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry’s selection process that ended up with former Sen. John Edwards as his running mate. While Edwards was recently aquitted of violating federal law by using campaign funds to support his mistress, his political career is likely over.
“I don’t think that any of the past races – in ’08, in ’04, any of that – would have affected” Romney’s vetting process, said Talent.
Talent made his comments in a phone conference call with reporters to discuss what he and Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich called “crony capitalism” in how the administration of President Barack Obama awarded contracts related to the 2009 economic-stimulus law.
While they offered no new examples of alleged stimulus cronyism in Missouri, they cited a complaint, which had surfaced during Blunt’s 2010 Senate campaign, that an energy firm that then included lawyer Tom Carnahan – the brother of U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, and Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan – received $107 million in a 2009 federal stimulus grant for a Missouri wind farm.
Asked what was new about the wind farm issue, Talent said: “What’s new about this is we have learned that the president – who has had time to meet with donors like Tom Carnahan over the last 6 months and have over 100 fundraisers -- has not had time to meet with his own jobs council.” Schweich said, “It just looks like crony capitalism to everybody here.”
Last October, Obama attended a $25,000-a-ticket fundraiser at Tom Carnahan’s home in St. Louis. The fundraiser was cohosted by other prominent St. Louis Democrats. Carnahan has since left the firm, Wind Capital Group, which has denied that any cronyism was involved in the stimulus grant. The funds were used to construct a wind farm in north-central Missouri, where it has been operating for more than a year.
As for Obama’s jobs council, Talent was referring to news reports that the council has not met in recent months. White House spokesman Jay Carney said this week that the council has made progress, even though arranging meetings had been difficult.
Carney said Obama “solicits and receives input and advice from members of his Jobs Council and others about economic initiatives all the time.” He said there are “numerous initiatives put forward by the Jobs Council that this administration under the president's direction has taken action” on.
On another issue related to the presidential campaign, Talent said he saw no need for Romney to release more of his tax returns. “The governor has released two years of tax returns, like 500 pages of it…. more than is required by the law.”
The St. Louisan said fact-checkers had found the allegations to be “completely invalid” that Romney had been involved in a decision by his former company, Bain Capital, to outsource some jobs from a Kansas City firm. Talent said Romney “had separated himself from Bain Capital before these decisions were made.”
Rather than Romney, Talent argued, the real “outsourcer-in-chief” is the Obama administration. Said Talent: “These energy subsidies are a classic example of that: $8.5 billion gone to wind farms, one of them in Missouri, which spent more than half that money overseas in Europe, buying the equipment that they needed.”