3:46 p.m. | Updated Is Mitt Romney too rich to be president?
President Obama’s push on Monday to extend tax cuts for the middle class — but not for the rich — is being joined by a new, all-out effort from his allies to portray Mr. Romney as out of touch with average Americans.
On Sunday, Democrats seized on new reports about Mr. Romney’s offshore bank accounts to hammer the presumptive Republican nominee, accusing him of not being forthcoming about the sources of his multimillion dollar fortune.
By Monday, more of Mr. Obama’s surrogates were hitting the airwaves to mock Mr. Romney’s day of high-dollar fund-raisers at estates in the Hamptons. The Democratic National Committee created a video highlighting reports of bank accounts in offshore institutions.
Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee e-mailed the video to reporters with the subject line: “Sunday Blood Sunday.”
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Monday, Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, bluntly accused the Republican candidate of not giving voters the information they need to make a decision about his wealth.
“Release the tax returns,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Put all this to rest. If Mitt Romney is not hiding something in Bermuda and Switzerland and the Caymans, it will be in the tax returns.”
Mr. Romney’s allies hit back furiously against the suggestion that he was hiding anything. Dan Señor, an adviser to Mr. Romney, said on “Morning Joe” that Mr. Gibbs was being “stunningly dishonest” in his attacks.
“The reason we know about these accounts, as Robert knows, is because they are in the tax returns that Mitt Romney released,” Mr. Señor said. “We know this because he submitted this information.”
A statement from the Republican campaign called questions about Mr. Romney’s wealth an “unfounded character assault” and said it was “unseemly and disgusting.”
Mr. Romney’s personal wealth became a serious issue during the Republican primary campaign when his rivals demanded to see his tax returns. Mr. Romney eventually released two years of his returns.
But since then, Mr. Obama’s campaign has focused more directly on Mr. Romney’s role as a business executive, suggesting that his career was a boon to the wealthy and that he did not have the interests of workers at heart.
The campaign first attacked Mr. Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, for shutting down factories and laying people off. Then it turned to the issue of outsourcing, describing Mr. Romney’s company as a “pioneer” in moving jobs overseas.
Now, it looks as if Mr. Obama’s strategists are ready to focus once again more directly on Mr. Romney’s wealth.
Will it work?
Democrats are hoping to find the right mix of policy and politics by offering voters a striking contrast between Mr. Obama’s refusal to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and Mr. Romney’s desire to cut taxes for people like himself.
Last week, Democratic allies of the president’s repeatedly pointed to Mr. Romney’s vacation at his lakeside estate in New Hampshire of evidence of his being out-of-touch.
In the East Room on Monday, Mr. Obama drew the line just that sharply, saying that under the economic ideas of Republicans, “the wealthy got wealthier, but most Americans struggled.”
He did not mention Mr. Romney by name, but predicted that the fight over tax cuts for the wealthy would be resolved by the choice that voters make in the presidential election this November.
“My opponent will fight to keep them in place,” he said. “I will fight to end them.”
Mr. Romney’s advisers believe the effort to focus voters on Mr. Romney’s wealth will misfire. They argue that voters want the candidates to talk about how they will turn around an economy that has battered middle class people.
Polling suggests they may be right. A Washington Post / ABC News survey in April found that 71 percent of those surveyed did not believe that Mr. Romney’s wealth would be a major reason to support or oppose him.
The polling did suggest that for those who said it was a major factor in the decision, it was more likely to be a negative. But Mr. Romney’s advisers argue that the facts about his offshore accounts will make that less likely.
Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney’s campaign, said on Fox News Sunday that the Republican candidate “hasn’t paid a penny less in taxes by virtue of where these funds are domiciled.” he said, “His liability is exactly the same as if he held the fund investments directly in the U.S.”
But for the most part, Mr. Romney’s advisers intend to try and ignore the attacks on his personal wealth. On Monday, they focused their responses on Mr. Obama’s renewed call to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire.
“Americans are struggling in a ‘zombie economy’ and President Obama’s only answer is to pass one of the largest tax hikes in history,” said Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman. “President Obama’s tax increases on families and job creators will create more economic uncertainty and fewer opportunities for struggling middle-class families.”
UPDATE: Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama’s campaign, emailed Monday afternoon to say that the president is not targeting Mr. Romney because he is a wealthy individual.
“This is not our intention. It’s not about wealth,” Mr. LaBolt wrote. “There have been other wealthy candidates, nobody is out to demonize wealth.”
Instead, Mr. LaBolt drew a distintion between Mr. Romney’s wealth and what the Democratic spokesman called Mr. Romney’s lack of “transparency” when it comes to disclosing information about his financial situation.
“It’s about the fact that Governor Romney, who could be the first President in history to keep his finances offshore, has defied precedent and kept his tax returns secret even though they could prove whether or not he avoided paying taxes,” Mr. LaBolt said.
Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.
