Romney Tells “Humorous” Story About Closing a Factory

In advance of the GOP primary next week, Mitt Romney tried to prove his Wisconsin connections by relating a “humorous” story about his father shutting down a factory, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.

Said Romney: “One of most humorous I think relates to my father. You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors… They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin. Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign.”

Romney recalled a parade in which a school band marching with his father’s campaign only knew the Wisconsin fight song, not the Michigan song.

He continued, while laughing: “So every time they would start playing ‘On, Wisconsin, On, Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin.”