QUAKERTOWN, Penn. – Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s “Every Town Counts” bus tour made a slight detour from its planned route through eastern Pennsylvania after over 100 protestors affiliated with the Obama campaign and MoveOn.org showed up at a gas station where he was scheduled to stop.
Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and an Obama supporter, also showed up at the scheduled stop – a Wawa gas station in Quakertown. The Romney campaign had sent advance staff to the location, but as the number of protestors grew, they decided to find a quieter location.
They chose another Wawa gas station nearby. Romney arrived with GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and shook hands with people in a small crowd that gathered. “How’d you find Quakertown on the map?” one local man asked after approaching Romney to shake his hand.
Romney laughed and replied, “We just followed, we smelled some hoagies.” Wawa is known throughout Pennsylvania for their sub sandwiches.
After ordering meatball sandwich inside the gas station, Romney joked with reporters that the campaign decided to switch locations because he already had a surrogate at the other stop – Rendell. “I understand I had a surrogate over there already, so we decided to pick a different place,” he said.
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