Sam Stein reports that Mitt Romney has been fundraising from a Solyndra lobbyist.
Romney is holding a fundraiser with nearly two dozen members of Congress on Wednesday, after which he will attend an event at the American Trucking Association with top K Street operatives. The list of attendees revealed by POLITICO includes Alex Mistri, managing director of The Glover Park Group.Over at MultipleChoiceMitt.com, Matt Ortega notes that this was something Romney used to oppose:
Despite working at a predominantly Democratic lobbying firm, Mistri is a reliable GOP donor and Romney supporter. He has donated $2,500 to his presidential bid so far this cycle, on top of the $1,000 he gave to Romney's Free and Strong America PAC. But work he did at Glover Park as a lobbyist for Solyndra seems a touch discordant with the views of many in the Republican Party, who have worked to portray the company's failure as a referendum on alternative energy development and the administration's embrace of it.
He suggested the loans to the California companies were influenced by campaign donations and called them "handouts to politically connected investors with politically correct business ideas."I'm sure that no one could have predicted that Mitt Romney would change his view on taking money from Solyndra lobbyists.
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"Like Solyndra, these loans are turning out to be historic opportunities to line the pockets of major campaign fundraisers," Romney wrote.