REUTERS

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s campaign released a video on Monday calling Mitt Romney’s private equity firm a job-killing “vampire” that ran a steel mill into the ground, signalling a new effort to carve into Romney’s image of corporate success.

The Obama campaign’s six-minute video - a shorter version of which will air on TV stations in the key states of Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado - came on a day in which the president’s team sought to draw dramatic contrasts between Obama and Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president.

Two days after Romney tried to woo conservative evangelical Christians in a commencement speech at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Obama spoke at a women’s college in New York City and urged the graduates to fight for a more equitable and tolerant nation.

“Fight not just for a seat at the table,” Obama said, noting that women now make up nearly half the work force and have moved into leadership positions in many companies.

“Fight for a seat at the head of the table.” Later, the Democratic president attended two fundraisers in New York, including one with supporters from the gay community, co-hosted by openly gay singer Ricky Martin.

The fundraiser was held less than a week after Obama announced that he supported same-sex marriages, a move that thrilled the gay and lesbian community but may not play as well with independent voters whose support will be crucial for Obama in the November 6 election. “We have never gone wrong when we expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody.

That doesn’t weaken families, that strengthens families,” Obama said to applause.

Drawing further applause, Obama also hinted at pushing for a repeal of the Defence of Marriage Act — the 1996 law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

“So everything we do — from Wall Street reform, making sure that banks aren’t taking risks with other people’s money that taxpayers may have to end up bailing out later, to repealing DOMA...all of these things are designed to make sure that we’re restoring middleclass security,” he said.

The Obama administration has declined to defend DOMA in court. Republican leaders have vowed to use Obama’s support for gay marriage - which led Newsweek magazine to dub him “the first gay president” - against him as they try to attract support from independents and churchgoers who oppose gay marriage.

During his speech at Liberty on Saturday, Romney emphasised his view that marriage “is a relationship between one man and one woman.” The tone for Monday was set by the Obama campaign’s ad, which showed that he will seek to undermine Romney’s candidacy by attacking the Republican’s justification for running: his experience as a turn-around specialist in the corporate world. The video released focuses on the demise of the GS Technologies mill in Kansas City, Missouri, which Romney’s company Bain Capital bought in 1993.

Bain’s involvement with the mill was detailed in a Reuters special report in January.