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DNC chair: Romney would have 'decimated' Ohio's economy by letting auto industry die

Gov. Mitt Romney’s latest ad paints the candidate as instrumental in the auto bailout.

Gov. Mitt Romney’s latest ad paints the candidate as instrumental in the auto bailout. That's right—the man who wanted to "let Detroit go bankrupt" is now claiming to be the industry's savior.

The ad also charges that under President Obama, Ohio dealerships were forced to close, focusing on one auto dealer that let 30 employees go.

And Democrats are pushing back.

The ad is “completely wrong,” according to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Convention, said on Hardball Wednesday. “There are actually 2,200 more jobs in auto dealerships in Ohio than there were when Barack Obama took office."


Wasserman Schultz added that one in eight jobs in Ohio is associated with the auto industry.

“The reason that the unemployment rate is below the national average is because Barack Obama had the courage to bail out the American auto industry,” Wasserman Schultz said. “If left to Mitt Romney, we would have lost 1.4 million jobs in the auto industry — many of them in Ohio.”

Ohio's economy, Wasserman Schultz said, "would have been decimated."

Obama has been making hay out of Romney's opposition to the auto bailout, which has become one of his administration's major successes. "My opponent thought it was a good idea to let Detroit go bankrupt," the president said last month in Texas. "With a million jobs at stake, I didn't agree. Now GM is on top."