Romney denounces Obama-Wright ads

Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.

Mitt Romney swiftly and firmly distanced himself Thursday from a group exploring plans to target President Barack Obama’s relationship with a controversial former pastor. But the revival of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue momentarily placed race at the center of the presidential contest and showcased the independent groups playing a new role this year with big-money TV ads.

Republican Romney pushed back against a proposal being weighed by a conservative super PAC, Ending Spending Action Fund, to run a $10 million ad campaign drawing attention to racially provocative sermons Wright delivered at a church Obama attended in Chicago. But with super PACS operating under significantly looser campaign-finance restrictions than in past presidential contests, there was no guarantee Romney’s words would be heeded by other groups eager to make Wright — and, by extension, race — a factor in the campaign.

“I want to make it very clear: I repudiate that effort,” Romney told reporters after a campaign stop in Florida. “I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign. I hope that our campaigns can be respectively about the future and about issues and about vision for America.”

Romney indicated he was eager to shift the discussion back to jobs and the economy — bedrock issues on which he contends Obama is vulnerable.