Mitt Romney did his best to publicly stay out of this summer’s fast-food culture wars, declaring earlier this month that the controversy surrounding Chick-fil-A’s opposition to same-sex marriage was not a topic that was “part of my campaign.”
But campaign finance records show that the presumptive GOP nominee’s camp appears to have made its support known at the same place that thousands of opponents of gay marriage did: at the chicken-chain’s counter.
Politico waded through the latest batch of campaign records made public Monday, and discovered that the Romney campaign spent $500 at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta last month, only days before the Mike Huckabee-organized “Appreciation Day” of the fast-food chain (and apparently well after chain president Dan Cathy’s public affirmation of the company’s “Biblical” view on marriage). The campaign reported the purchase as “meeting expense.”
Given the political world’s current focus on All Things Todd Akin, the news likely won’t cause too much of a headache for the Romney camp, especially given that the purchase technically happened before the mass-consumption-as-support demonstrations. But in nonetheless highlights the tight rope Mitt Romney has had to walk as he does his best to keep his campaign focused squarely on the economy while at the same time avoiding alienating social conservatives who have never been his biggest fan.
