Former Massachusetts Gov. and 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said he could have done a better job sufficiently communicating his message to minority communities in the country during the last presidential election, and he also said he should have fought back harder against attacks he says were not accurate.
After telling donors earlier in the year he was thinking about making a third White House run, Mr. Romney said in January that he would not be running in 2016.
If he had run again, Mr. Romney told Yahoo News’ Katie Couric, he would have spent “a great deal of time taking my message to Hispanic-Americans and to other minority groups in this country — African-Americans, Asian-Americans — and describing why it is that conservative principles are best for them and for their families.”
Exit polls from the 2012 election showed that President Obama won more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote and the Asian vote and more than 90 percent of the African-American vote.
“That’s something I wish I would have spent a lot more time doing,” Mr. Romney said. “We’d have taken ad dollars as well and responded to some of the attacks that came our way — some of them, by the way, below the belt. There were things that were said in some of the ads that came against us in Hispanic media, but also in English media, that were not accurate, and we should have fought back harder against those things and shut ’em down, and made it loud and clear that those things were wrong.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign hammered Mr. Romney relentlessly over his business record and comments he made at a private event that 47 percent of people in the country who were dependent on the government would likely support Mr. Obama.
“But, you know, I’m not gonna get a chance to do that — I’m gonna be supporting someone else — but I will be talking to our nominee about the mistakes I made and suggesting things that he or she ought to do differently that I did,” Mr. Romney said.
What he really wished they had done differently, Mr. Romney said, was “make a greater effort and communicating to minority voters in this country the policies that I think are right to help minority families, and that’s probably without question the biggest mistake that I made in the campaign.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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