Romney’s risky campaign focus

There’s a belief among the strategists surrounding Mitt Romney that his campaign should focus almost exclusively on the state of America’s economy. It’s an obvious battleground with unemployment figures hovering around 8 per cent, a sorely depressed manufacturing sector, and soaring petrol price.

Sacrificed to this belief are a broader spectrum of policies. Throughout his entire campaign, for example, Romney has given just one major foreign policy speech. The single-issue approach adopted by Romney’s team – essentially turning the election into a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy – is a risky strategy, and one the campaign is not playing as best it could.

Romney was heckled the other day when addressing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after vowing to ‘kill’ Obamacare. This might be a touchstone issue for dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, but it won’t pay dividends for Romney as he reaches out to Black and Hispanic voters. One in five black Americans lacks health insurance, while the same is true for 41 per cent of Hispanics.

These are precisely the minority constituents who will prove decisive in the key battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio this November. To compound Romney’s problem with minority voters, recent figures show that the Obama campaign has already spent $6 million targeting Hispanic voters in swing states. By contrast, Romney has spent just $120,000.

The election should be wide open, but unless Romney can find new ways to engage minority groups the contest in November will not be as close as many are predicting. As one friend remarked to me during a recent trip to Washington, ‘If Romney had been this bad at closing deals on Wall Street, he’d be homeless right now’.