Virg Bernero: Rick Snyder shipped jobs overseas 'like a lemming'

Michigan gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero mingles with the crowd during a candidate mixer event in Ann Arbor back in May.

Ryan J. Stanton | AnnArbor.com

"They talk about economic development, I’ve done it. What he’s developed is he’s developed jobs overseas," Bernero said on the "Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider" on 1290. "He’s developed jobs all right, but he’s developed them overseas. That’s the problem. He’s just developed them on the wrong continent.

"All that record’s going to come out. He waves round his private sector experience. We’re going to talk about his private sector experience of outsourcing and offshoring the American dream."

His comments are indicative of how the general election is likely to play out, with Bernero deriding Snyder's business record and Snyder criticizing Bernero as a "career politician." 

Democrats hope the campaign will be a replay of 2006, when Gov. Jennifer Granholm successfully portrayed Republican billionaire Dick DeVos as an outsourcer.

It's also an indication that Snyder's Gateway tenure -- which GOP opponent Mike Cox tried to exploit -- will remain in the spotlight for the general election.

Gateway grew from about 700 employees in the U.S. to more than 10,000 from 1991 to 1997, the period during which Snyder was serving as an executive, according to government records analyzed by AnnArbor.com this summer.

From 2000 to 2005, while Snyder was still serving on Gateway's Board of Directors, the company started to collapse as the industry restructured and the firm failed to get traction with new tech products.

The company had 21,000 U.S. employees in 2000 and 1,800 by 2005 -- a decline attributable partly to a sales collapse and partly to outsourcing the company embraced to avoid going out of business, experts told AnnArbor.com.

Snyder has argued that he was a "minority voice" on Gateway's board during the company's collapse and couldn't stop the company from downsizing.

Bernero, however, didn't like that argument.

"When you serve on the board of directors, you have a responsibility. He’s trying to shirk the responsibility, he’s trying to point the finger at someone else," Bernero said. "You show me, Rick, you show me in the minutes where you fought to keep the jobs here. No, you didn’t. That’s not leadership. You went along, you got along to get along. You agreed, you followed along like a lemming. You shipped those jobs overseas. And we’re going to hang it around his neck. He’s got to own it, he’s got to wear it."

Snyder's campaign, in response, said Bernero was taking a typical political route.

"Perhaps the mayor was already too angry to pay attention, but it's pretty clear that voters rejected these types of lies and desperate attacks from politicians yesterday and chose to support a candidate who's offering a positive path forward for Michigan and vision for a brighter future," Snyder campaign spokesman Jake Suski said in an e-mail.

The fight between Bernero and Snyder is sure to be intense, but early indications suggest Snyder is the favorite.

Voters polled by Rasmussen Reports in June found that Snyder would have the support of 42 percent of voters in a general election race against Bernero, who had 30 percent in the poll.

But Bernero, speaking today, said his win in the Democratic primary foreshadows his success in the general election.

"We proved all the pundits wrong. They said I didn’t have enough money. They said I was too loud, I was too boisterous, I was too rough around the edges, and the biggest thing they said was I didn’t have the money. The money, the money, the money," Bernero said.

"And come to find out the people matter. Come to find out the people are the ones that decide, not the pundits, the pollsters and the prognosticators. We’re going to put the people first in this campaign, that’s how we’re going to win in November."

Contact AnnArbor.com's Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's newsletters.