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Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx Tuesday greeted the pending arrival of Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan by describing comments by his running mate as “insulting” to North Carolinians.
Foxx joined former Democratic U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge on an afternoon conference call to respond to comments GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney made at a private fundraiser.
“Yesterday a secret video came to light that shows what Mitt Romney thinks of nearly half our country,” Foxx said. “This sort of disrespectful language has no place in a presidential campaign at all. It’s hard to be president of all the people when you write off half of them.”
At a fundraiser, Romney told a group of donors that 47 percent of Americans will vote for President Barack Obama because they are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims.”
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney said in comments that were taped. “All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them …
“And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Foxx said he knows who the 47 percent are. “They’re students … police officers, firefighters and teachers … veterans.” Gail Gitcho, Romney’s communications director, said, Romney “wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy.”
“As the governor has made clear all year,” she said, “he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million … struggling to find work.”
Foxx and Etheridge made their comments hours before Romney’s running mate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, was scheduled to make a quick stop in Greensboro en route to Virginia.
First lady Michelle Obama campaigns in Durham and Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday.
