Scott Prouty revealed himself on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” Wednesday night as the bartender who shot a damaging video of Mitt Romney dismissing President Obama’s supporters during a closed-press fundraiser last year.

“I was behind this whole thing,” Prouty said.

The bartender said he brought a camera to the Boca Raton, Fla. fundraiser in case Romney came back to take pictures with the staff, as former president Bill Clinton had done at another event Prouty worked. ”I didn’t go there with a grudge against Romney,” he said. “I really had no idea he would say what he said.”

Prouty grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Boston, he said. He said he felt that people who couldn’t afford to attend a high-priced fundraiser should get a chance “to find out what the candidate actually thinks.”

He said he struggled for two weeks with whether or not to release the video and risk his own career. He did not have health insurance. After wrestling with the decision, he decided it would be cowardly not to release the video: “I went down the path and never looked back.”

Romney’s comments on the “47 percent” who he described as dependent on government handouts were a major blow to his campaign, as the former Massachusetts governor himself acknowledged in a recent interview.

But it was Romney’s anecdote about visiting a factory in China that first piqued Prouty’s interest. After the fundraiser he did some research and found a Mother Jones article by David Corn about Bain Capital’s investment in a Chinese manufacturing firm.  He posted the clip in comment sections on news websites and liberal blogs. But without more context, the videos didn’t gain traction. Prouty decided that he wanted Corn to take the story national.

Prouty says he did not reveal himself before the election because he did not want to draw attention away from the video itself: “I wanted Mitt Romney’s words, and Mitt Romney’s words only” to be the focus. Now, he says, he expects “to be torn apart by the right-wing media.”

Prouty says he is a registered independent but tends to vote Democratic. He had no contact with the Obama campaign. Watching the second presidential debate, in which Obama invoked the “47 percent” video in his final statement, Prouty cheered.

“I was thrilled that he hit him with it when he did,” he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/03/13/scott-prouty-reveals-himself-as-man-who-shot-47-percent-video/

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