47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video That Rocked the 2012 Election

By David Corn

From the reporter who broke the Romney video story, 47 Percent reveals for the first time the dramatic tale of how David Corn, Washington Bureau chief at Mother Jones, MSNBC analyst and author of the New York Times bestseller Showdown, learned of its existence, located the source, authenticated the video, and persuaded the source to let him release it. In 47 Percent, Corn recounts how the 47 percent video fit into the ongoing narrative of the 2012 election and greatly changed the course of the campaign. This instant, on-the-news book also features an astute review of the first debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate as they head into the final stretch of this historical election.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062266811

David Corn

David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Hubris (with Michael Isikoff) and The Lies of George W. Bush, and regularly provides commentary on National Public Radio.

Book preview

47 Percent

Uncovering the Romney Video That Rocked the 2012 Election

DAVID CORN

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CONTENTS

47 PERCENT

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by David Corn

Copyright

About the Publisher

47 PERCENT

IT ALL BEGAN with the disposal of aborted fetuses.

That was what led to one of Mitt Romney’s worst moments in the 2012 election and possibly his downfall as a presidential candidate: the revelation of a secretly recorded video at a private fundraiser that captured Romney denigrating 47 percent of the electorate as victims and moochers who rely upon government handouts, who do not pay income taxes, and, perhaps most insulting of all, who do not take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

This story, which generated headlines around the world, hit as Romney was slogging through the final stretch of a presidential contest that was not proceeding as Romney had once hoped it would. Instead of a referendum on President Barack Obama’s handling of the sluggish economy, the election had become a choice between the two candidates and their respective visions—or perhaps a referendum on Romney’s character.

IN LATE JUNE, three months before I revealed the 47 percent video on the Mother Jones website, I received an email from an investigator I’ve known for years: Got a sec for a quick chat? My answer: Sure.

As a reporter, I receive tips and leads from a number of sources. Some have an obvious motive. (Say, a political campaign will point out something odd in the campaign disclosure filing of an opponent.) In most cases, the tipster is presenting me with material already in the public domain—not undercover video or a diary pilfered from someone’s home. The stuff simply has not been noticed. Usually the most important task at hand is determining whether the proffered material is factually correct and actually newsworthy.

This source—whom I’ll call Luke—and I spoke that night, and he told me about a Bain Capital investment that could be bad news for Romney. Luke wasn’t with the Obama reelection campaign or the White House, but he didn’t say who his client was.

The deal was this: in late 1999, Bain Capital—the private equity firm Romney had founded and managed—and another private equity company had invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical waste disposal firm that in more recent years has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing of aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics.

The Huffington Post earlier in the year had run an article reporting on this Bain investment. But when the HuffPo piece came out, Bain tamped down the potential controversy. The company’s official line was that Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. That seemed to mean he had not been directly involved in the deal. Romney’s connection to a firm that disposed of aborted fetuses—indirect or not—never became a campaign issue.

Luke encouraged me to take another look, noting that my colleagues at the Washington bureau of Mother Jones and I had a reputation for digging and producing articles that went beyond the daily (and sometimes silly) give-and-take of political campaigns. He emailed me an electronic pile of documents, including news stories that chronicled Stericycle’s spotty safety record in its early years.

Included in the material were documents Bain had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. After I quickly confirmed that these SEC records were real, I read them and saw that Romney was listed as an active participant in the Stericycle investment, which occurred in November