What They Don't Mention: Laid Off Steelworker in Anti-Romney Ad Was Offered A Buyout

Have you seen the Obama reelection campaign's new anti-Romney commercial?

The ad, which is slated to run in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado, focuses on GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that went bankrupt and closed under Bain Capital.

The ad is pretty heavy on the class warfare rhetoric (“Those [Bain Capital] guys were all rich. They all have more money then they’ll ever spend") and light on reasons for why the alternative to Romney is any better.

Featured prominently in the anti-Romney ad is a former steel worker named Joe Soptic. As it turns out, Soptic is no stranger to “the anti-Bain beat,” as the Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering puts it.

“In January, Soptic complained to Democracy Now, a liberal non-profit TV station, that when the steel company he worked for was bought out, they tried to buy him out,” Spiering reports.

While interviewing on Democracy Now, Soptic said: "I guess the first thing I noticed that when the company was bought out by GST, They became very union non-friendly, they started looking for ways to eliminate jobs.”

"In my case in my department, they actually offered to buy our jobs out from underneath us [emphasis added]," he added.

Soptic also told his interviewer that he was angry because his pension was cut. He went on to clarify that although his 401k was untouched, he still lost $400 a month from his pension.

However, that $400 figure is $117 more than what he told Reuters in a January 2012 story. In the Reuters report, he said he was losing $283 per month from his pension.

Within hours, "Team Romney" responded to the GS Technologies ad with something, well, a little less resentful and a little more positive:

Oh, and it should be pointed out that the layoffs at GS Technologies occurred a full two years after Romney quit the day-to-day operations of Bain Capital to head the Salt Lake City Olympics, the Daily Caller reports.

So, yeah, the ad's timeline is off just a little bit.