Romney cites Olympics success

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mitt Romney returned to Salt Lake City on Saturday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 2002 Winter Games he helped lead, but the GOP presidential candidate came under attack for urging the federal government to provide big bucks for Olympic expenses.

Romney was hired to lead the Salt Lake Olympic Committee after a bribery scandal threatened the games. The success of those Olympics, he says during the campaign, help make the case for his bid for the White House. “I led an Olympics out of the shadows of scandal,” Romney told conservative activists this month.

In brief remarks to Olympic staff and volunteers on Saturday, Romney highlighted his own efforts to cut costs at the games and was careful to highlight the accomplishments of those who worked for him. He didn’t mention his presidential run.

Romney said he cut millions from the budget to decorate the city and argued some of the venues built in Salt Lake cost much less than they had in other cities that had hosted winter games.

Romney, who has sometimes been accused of taking too much personal credit for saving the games when many others contributed, was careful to acknowledge the support he received.

“I just want to say thanks to all those that lit the fire within. The accounting team, the legal team,” Romney said, referring to the games’ theme song, “Light the Fire Within,” and rattling off the groups he had left off his list of people to thank.

Romney also planned to greet several private receptions ahead of a planned speech at an ice skating exhibition celebrating of the anniversary.

“The Olympics was really the first place where the entire country got to know” him, said spokeswoman Gail Gitcho.”It propelled him into the national spotlight.”

But his opponents are attacking his record at the games, with both Democrats and GOP presidential rival Rick Santorum criticizing Romney for helping to secure millions in federal earmarks that helped cover Olympic costs.

“One of the things he talks about most is how he heroically showed up on the scene and bailed out and resolved the problems of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games,” Santorum said during a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio. “He heroically bailed out the Salt Lake City Olympic Games by heroically going to Congress and asking them for tens of millions of dollars to bail out the Salt Lake games — in an earmark.”

Democrats made those claims, too, in a web video released Friday. They highlighted comments from Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee who’s a longtime critic of federal support for the Olympics and other international sporting events.

McCain called the Olympics “an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City and its environs.”

Romney’s campaign says most of the money went to provide security in the wake of Sept. 11. The games were held about five months after the terrorist attacks and were the first major international event since the al-Qaida strikes.

“There is a pretty wide gulf between seeking money for post-9/11 security at the Olympics and seeking earmarks for polar bear exhibits at the Pittsburgh Zoo,” spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement, taking a dig at Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator. “Mitt Romney wants to ban earmarks. Sen. Santorum wants more ‘Bridges to Nowhere.’”

That’s a reference to two proposed bridge projects priced at some $450 million, in sparsely populated areas of Alaska, that became a symbol for the proliferation of thousands of earmarks, or special projects sought by individual lawmakers, that were part of 2005 transportation legislation.

Story Continues →

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.