Meet Michele Davis, Mitt Romney's new PR flack—hired specifically to help burnish his controversial Bain history.
Davis is a partner at The Brunswick Group, a PR firm, as Rachel Maddow reported Thursday night. Here's what else you should know about Davis:
- She was hired by BP to help re-polish its image after the Gulf Coast oil spill.
- She was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae. (Remember Romney attacking Gingrich for ... being a lobbyist for Fannie Mae?)
- She served as a top aide to former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson during the Bush administration. (Cynthia Nixon portrayed her in the HBO movie Too Big To Fail)
During her work for BP, Davis was responsible for the disastrous video apology from then-CEO Tony Hayward that backfired after it went viral. AdvertisingAge conducted a poll at the time to ask if PR professionals would take the BP job: 43% of people in the "not exactly saint-like ad industry" said no, they would not take it for ethical reasons, Maddow reported.
Davis, of course, was only too happy to. And now she's signed on for a similar mission: Finding a way to wash the muck off of Romney from his tenure at Bain.
As Maddow added, the Brunswick Group was also hired by Gap in 2007 when the clothing company came under fire for running sweatshops in India with 10-year-old employees.