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Business Title: Romney Touts Support From CEOs on Jobs Council Mitt Romney’s White House bid comes down to business experience – i.e. he has it, the president doesn’t. To that end, the Romney campaign trotted out a roster of well-known business leaders Thursday who are backing the Republican presidential nominee. Supporters include Charles Schwab, Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers and Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot. The newest name on the list belongs to Intel CEO Paul Otellini, a member of President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Mr. Otellini’s relationship with the president has been hot-and-cold since Mr. Obama took office. In 2010, he criticized the administration for failing to generate more robust job growth. He was particularly critical of the stimulus. But the Intel CEO joined the president’s so-called jobs council to much fanfare the following year as Mr. Obama embarked on a very public – if short-lived – courtship of big business. The president lauded Intel for investing in the U.S. during a trip last year to one of the chipmaker’s advanced manufacturing facilities in Oregon. During the visit, Mr. Otellini announced plans to build a $5 billion production facility in Arizona that would employ thousands of workers in the U.S. The Intel chief also made two high-profile trips to the White House, including a state dinner with Chinese President Hu Jintao. But the jobs council has not held an official meeting since January – a fact Republicans like to highlight. The Intel chief has called for lowering corporate tax rates and scrapping some tax loopholes – a priority shared by Messrs. Obama Romney – but he told Charlie Rose in 2010 that the administration was slow to embrace ideas offered up by the business community to spur job growth. Silicon Valley is one of the big financial bread baskets for Democratic politicians, but Mr. Otellini’s political giving skews more Republican. In 2008, he cut checks to Mr. Obama’s opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain. And last month, he gave $50,000 to the Romney Victory Fund and another $5,000 to the candidate, according to Federal Election Commission records. The Romney campaign move comes days after locking horns with the heads of two of the most recognizable brands in American business, Chrysler and General Motors. Chief executives from two of the Big Three domestic automakers rebuffed assertions made in Romney campaign ads running in Ohio that the companies, which benefited from a federal bailout, are expanding production in China at the expense of workers here in the U.S. In 2010, Intel opened its first plant in China, a $2.5 billion facility to produce semiconductors for Asian markets.
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