Romney courts South Carolina veterans, goes after Obama

SUMTER, S.C. — Amid shaking hands and signing campaign posters, Mitt Romney did something he has never done before on the ropeline: He took out his wallet and handed a wad of cash to a woman waiting to shake his hand.
The woman, 55-year-old Ruth Williams, says she has been following the Romney campaign since he arrived in the state on Jan. 11, when she said she received a message from God to track him down.
“I was on the highway praying and said, ‘God just show me how to get [my] lights on,’ and I pulled up to a stop sign and his bus was there,” said Williams, who has been unemployed since last October. “And then God said, ‘Follow the bus,’ and I followed the bus to the airport.”
According to Williams, she followed the campaign bus to the Columbia airport on Wednesday, the same day Romney was arriving from New Hampshire. When Romney wasn’t on the bus, aides told her to go to the rally scheduled in Columbia later that day. When she showed up, Romney found her to say hello and pulled over South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to say “hello” too.
“He was kind to me and he made Gov. Haley come see about me,” Williams said. “He stopped doing everything.


After days of controversy over commercials criticizing Romney’s company, Bain Capital, for slashing jobs in South Carolina, Romney did not mention Bain, but instead compared his experience creating jobs to Obama’s experience as a community organizer.


“He likes to say that he has had extensive experience working alongside hard working Americans.” Romney said. “I think it helps to have actually been a hard working American...To create jobs in the private sector, it helps to have had a job in the private sector.”


Jobs are a top issue for voters in South Carolina – the state’s current unemployment rate is 9.9%, and this summer the state had the third-highest unemployment rate in the country. South Carolina is a right-to-work state, which means unions cannot require employees to join or pay dues, and a strong anti-union bias has grown after the National Labor Relations Board tried to prohibit Boeing Co. from building a plant north of Charleston, accusing the company of moving jobs from Washington State to avoid hiring union employees.


Romney alluded to federal government interference in enterprise in his speech, saying that as a businessman, he knew how to create an environment that would make companies want to create jobs.


“I will make America again the best place for enterprise,” he said.


Romney also pledging to open up energy drilling, cut federal spending and get government out of voters’ lives.