Precious: Lefty Consternation That Romney May Have Packed Univision Crowd With Supporters

Team Mitt might be playing a little more hardball than we think.

Mitt Romney’s campaign took a hard line with the Spanish-language network Univision, making last-minute demands in the run-up to last week’s town hall that helped insure his success in the forum, sources familiar with the broadcast told BuzzFeed.

It’s perfectly all right, of course, for Republican forums and debates to be mysteriously packed with various and sundry public sector union members who are oh-so-concerned about whatever evil the Democrats say is being forced upon them by the GOP. Much like the weeping and gnashing of teeth that broke out on the left when the Tea Party protests began (protests, after all, were their thing), it’s clear they aren’t fans of their own tactics when used against them.

It appears that the original plan was intended to help somewhat stack the deck against Romney.

Salinas told BuzzFeed that tickets for each forum were divided between the network, the respective campaigns, and the University of Miami (which hosted the events) — and she said both campaigns initially agreed to keep the audience comprised mostly of students, in keeping with the events’ education theme.

That’s fair-let’s keep the audience restricted to a demographic that’s been undergoing radical leftist indoctrination for four decades. What could possibly go wrong for the GOP candidate?

Apparently, the Romney camp wasn’t content to play by old school media rules.

But after exhausting the few conservative groups on campus, the Romney camp realized there weren’t enough sympathetic students to fill the stands on their night — so they told the network and university that if they weren’t given an exemption to the students-only rule, they might have to “reschedule.”

The organizers relented. One Democrat with ties to the Obama campaign noted that Rudy Fernandez, the university official charged with coordinating the forums, is a member of Romney’s Hispanic steering committee. Fernandez did not respond to BuzzFeed’s questions about whether he gave preferential treatment to Romney’s campaign.

In any case, Romney’s team was allowed to bus in rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at their town hall.

Good for them.