WASHINGTON — Early last week, when it looked like Mitt Romney would waltz through the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, the Democratic National Committee hosted a press call to criticize Romney for not releasing his tax returns.

Toward the end of the event, as a DNC spokeswoman was wrapping up, one of the Democrats on the call interjected to serve up one last quip about Romney.

Mayor R.T. Rybak

“Could I make one other quick point here?” Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak said. “When I hear Mitt Romney talk about his finances, it reminds me of an old Madonna song, ‘Like a Virgin,’ and it’s just as believable.”

Rybak was named vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in September, and he’s been one of the party’s biggest attack dogs since then, joining the DNC in training a laser-like focus on Romney, knocking him on everything from his record as head of Bain Capital and governor of Massachusetts to his inability to court conservative voters.

The DNC job gives Rybak a large new platform and makes him one of Barack Obama’s leading defenders nationwide, four years after his early support for the then-U.S. senator’s presidential bid. It also lends national credibility to the pro-Obama, anti-Republican message Rybak was going to spend 2012 spreading anyway.

“I’m used to having my biggest hobby be campaigning,” Rybak said. “Now I’m just doing it at a higher level.”

Latest side job
Rybak’s DNC work is just his latest off-the-clock political side job. Rybak worked as Minnesota co-chair for presidential candidates Bill Bradley in 2000 and Howard Dean in 2004, in addition to his two mayoral re-election races and his short-lived 2010 gubernatorial campaign. He was the first mayor to endorse Obama in 2008 and served as his state co-chair.

He was picked as a DNC vice chair in early September, working under Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who called Rybak “a strong voice for mayors within the party, and an incredible surrogate for the president and Democrats” when his selection was announced.

Acting as a surrogate to a president’s re-election bid is cathartic for the self-described “political junkie,” who said he was concerned Obama’s message was being lost amid the buzz of the Republican presidential contest.

“Instead of having to throw my shoe at the television when the president didn’t get the credit I thought he deserved, now I get to go and speak for him,” Rybak said from Washington’s Capital Hilton last week, when he was in town for a Conference of Mayors meeting. “I’m tired of hearing a bunch of baloney from people who don’t recognize what this president has done against incredible odds.”

Since mid-December, Rybak has held press events with Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire, giving the Democratic rebuttal to the developments in the Republican presidential nomination contest. He has become a frequent face on cable news and has even made appearances on international television.

“The fact that the administration and the DNC has faith in him to hold a high-level position, people will take his views and understand that he’s an informed and intelligent and talented spokesperson who will know his facts,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said. “That’s what you have to rely upon in politics, people who are trustworthy.”

Rybak has watched every Republican presidential debate and even attended a few, running counter-communications on behalf of the DNC in its effort to diminish the accomplishments and platforms of the Republicans seeking the party’s presidential nomination. A former-Republican-turned-progressive, Rybak is quick to take on the Republican Party for its hard rightward turn.

“I am absolutely on fire to tell the story about the radical faction of the Republican Party and what they haven’t done in the middle of a crisis,” he said.  “It’s absolutely, deeply wrong, so I have an incredible passion for this work right now.”

But if Republicans are the Democrats’ target, then Romney is the bull’s eye, and the DNC has its barbs targeted solely on him. For his part, Rybak has more material in his bag than a simple Madonna joke.

•On taxes: “This is a person that has no single consistent ideology in his entire political campaign except for consistently being for tax breaks for the very, very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and removing what I see as necessary oversight. It’s the only thing in his whole political history that he’s been for. It happens to be the only thing that directly benefits him.”

•On consistency: “On every single other issue that matters, he’s changed on depending on who the audience is.”

•On his poll numbers: “If you were at a dance and every single guy on your side of the room collapsed and the woman across the room finally said, ‘I guess I’ll dance with you, there’s nobody else,’ that shouldn’t make you feel like Casanova.”

Polling gives Romney credence
There’s a simple reason behind the Democrats’ obsession with Romney: polling.

Even though polls often show Obama losing by a handful of points to a generic Republican, Romney has emerged as the only Republican left in the race that comes close to beating him next November (Obama holds about a 2-point lead on Romney nationally, according to the latest Real Clear Politics head-to-head averages. He leads Ron Paul by 6 points, Rick Santorum by 10 and Newt Gingrich by 11).

Throughout the fall, even as a new Republican saw his polling numbers surge every couple of weeks, the Democrats have never deviated from their Romney-first line of attack. Rybak said the DNC had messaging ready to go for any candidate, depending on who emerged as a serious Romney alternative, but he paused when asked which of the Republican surges worried the Democrats the most.

“At some level they all seemed sort of viable at the time but that all had some challenges,” he said. “Every time there was a little bubble, people would talk about [attacking them], but we knew from the beginning that Mitt Romney was far and away the most likely.”

It’s not unusual for the sitting president’s party to key in on just one of its challengers the way the Democrats have, according to Larry Jacobs, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Politics and Governance. But the Democrats have gone negative on Romney quicker than normal, he said.

“The parties are not dumb,” he said. “They look ahead at what candidates are going to emerge and start to tattoo them.”

But Jacobs said the Democrats can’t take too much credit for Romney’s sudden precarious standing in the Republican field — conservative voters are far less likely to heed the Democratic attacks on one of their candidates, but they’ll pay attention to the extra scrutiny Romney has received from fellow Republicans like Newt Gingrich.

But Democrats are quick to take any credit they can. Buckley said it was anti-Romney messaging from the DNC that held him under 40 percent in the New Hampshire primaries, a state where Romney’s support runs deep.

In the end, though, after the Republicans have their candidate, Democrats are going to win or lose the general election based largely on how people perceive the success of President Obama. The focus is on Romney and the Republicans right now, but Rybak knows Obama’s time in the hot seat is coming.

“It’s no secret that I believe we have a president that is doing a great job,” he said. “We are dramatically better off than we were four years ago and we’re going to be much better off than if we go back to the past.” 

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry