Romney Camp Tries to Limit Reporters’ Access, and Rope Line Ruckus Erupts

The Romney campaign is known for its hyper-disciplined approach to the news media. Question-and-answer sessions with reporters are rare. Aides avoid on-the-record briefings. And the candidate’s latest outreach to voters, a series of casual meetings with middle-class Americans, is shielded from public view. But on May 16, the campaign took that curtain-drawing restrictiveness to a new level, leading to a brief kerfuffle with reporters and later, an apologetic clarification.

After Mitt Romney’s speech in Saint Petersburg (FL), campaign aides told members of the traveling press corps that they could not approach either the audience or the rope line where Romney shakes voters’ hands and casually speaks with them. Access to such interactions has long been a zealously protected staple of presidential campaign reporting that allows reporters to capture unscripted moments and pose questions to candidates (who typically ignore or pretend not to hear them). Romney, however, has at times proven a chatty and news-making figure on the rope lines, to his aides’ frustration. These moments have showcased a disarmingly candid side of Mr. Romney, but they have clashed with the imperatives of the carefully choreographed, modern political campaign. An official daily message — cut the debt, reduce regulations, tap domestic energy sources — has been repeatedly overshadowed by his offhanded remarks. That may explain the sudden efforts to put an even greater distance between reporters and the candidate, who are already separated by metal gates at events.