Romney Is Getting No Snyder Support in Run Dogged by Bailout - Businessweek

With Romney and Rick Santorum almost even in recent polls, Snyder has avoided confrontation, political combat and vigorous advocacy for a presidential candidate who opposed the action that helped his state’s unemployment rate fall to 9.3 percent in December from a peak of 14.1 percent in August 2009.

Snyder, 53, said he’d rather the candidates not hammer at the $82 billion federal bailout of companies including General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, an act that Snyder said saved Michigan’s economy from meltdown. Last week, GM said it earned $9.19 billion last year, the largest profit in its 103-year history, and regained its position as the world’s top-selling automaker.

“I’m not going to judge that,” Snyder told reporters last week at a Republican dinner near Detroit where 1,400 came to hear Santorum. “That’s history, and let’s move forward.”