A small business owner in a crucial swing state has found herself losing business from loyal customers due to her ad being featured in a Mitt Romney campaign ad. It seems her customers believe she is a Romney backer, but in fact she prefers to keep politics out of her business. And so this business owner demanded that the Romney camp either pull the ad or blur her deli's name from the frames that it's in. The campaign, she says, ignored her pleas.
You didn't hear about that story? Well, you certainly would if it actually happened, but, you see, this is the case of deli owner Debra Krause-McDonnell whose complaint is with President Obama's reelection campaign, reported Jane Prendergast in today's Cincinnati Enquirer:
The owner of a specialty deli at Findlay Market wants her store’s name removed from an ad President Barack Obama is using to defend his record on small business.
Ten seconds into the ad “Always,” a man is shown from behind, pushing up the security door of Krause’s while Obama’s voice talks about owners sacrificing to make their businesses run.
The owner of the store, Debra Krause-McDonnell, said that she did not give permission for her business to be shown and that some customers have told her they’ll no longer shop there.
“I’ve been put into a position I didn’t ask for,” she said Wednesday after the Hamilton County Republican Party sent out an email about the ad that accused Democrats of not responding to the owner’s concerns. “I’m a little angry.”
She’d be just as angry, she said, if it were an ad for Mitt Romney.
A store manager knew about the filming, Krause-McDonnell said, but was told it was for a survey on riot doors, those metal garage-type doors that pull down and lock to protect storefronts. That might be true, said Caleb Faux, director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, who researched the ad confusion and spoke with Obama campaign officials in Columbus.
The scene was from stock footage bought from a Cincinnati video company, Faux said. He did not know the name of the company but said he was told by the Obama campaign that company officials said they did explain to Krause’s manager that they were filming stock footage that could be purchased and used for any reason.
Krause-McDonnell (pronounced KROW-sea) appeared on today's Your World with Neil Cavuto, where she told substitute host Stuart Varney that her manager did not assent to, nor was she aware of the fact that a video production company could sell the footage to political campaigns. She also told Varney that after the ad ran, many customers reacted negatively and that she simply requested the campaign "haze out" the lettering in the frames that identified the deli as Krause's.
