A month ago, at a town-hall event in Ohio, John McCain heard first-hand about the hardship facing workers in Wilmington, Ohio, where a DHL plant was set to close.
Mary Houghtaling, who runs a hospice in Wilmington, Ohio, choked up as she told McCain of DHL’s plans to close its domestic air hub in her town, a move that could throw 8,600 people out of work. “This is a terrible blow,” McCain told her. “I don’t know if I can stop it. That’s some straight talk. Some more straight talk? I doubt it.”
It was not the kind of answer you often hear from a politician, and McCain is certainly hoping that kind of change will impress voters. When I talked to Houghtaling after the event, she was still wiping tears from her eyes. Houghtaling noted that she had supported McCain when he ran for President in 2000, and she intends to do it again. “Had he been elected,” she said, “I believe it would have been a different world.” But she didn’t fault McCain for his answer: “I think he was honest, because I don’t think there’s any hope.”
Fair enough. McCain no doubt impressed locals, at least when it comes to candor, by acknowledging that he might not be able to stop a plant-closing like this one.
But while McCain was patting himself on the back for offering the community some “straight talk,” he left out a rather important detail.
The foreign acquisition that prompted the plant closing in Wilmington was championed by none other than John McCain and his lobbyist-turned-campaign manager, Rick Davis.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s blog reported today:
Little known to [Wilmington] citizens, McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, played roles in the fate of DHL Express and its Ohio air park as far back as 2003. Back then, however, their actions that helped DHL and its German owner, Deutsche Post World Net, acquire the Wilmington operations resulted in expansion, not retraction.
In a private meeting Thursday, Wilmington residents will ask McCain for help in stopping DHL’s proposal to quit using the airport as a hub, which could cost more than 8,000 jobs. DHL says that it wants to stay in the freight business but that it can stem financial losses if it can put its packages aboard the planes of a rival – United Parcel Service – before delivering them in DHL trucks. UPS flies out of Louisville, Ky., so the proposed change would render the Wilmington airport unnecessary.
None of that was anticipated in 2003, when McCain and Davis, who was a Washington lobbyist before managing the presidential campaign, first got involved. Several Wilmington civic leaders said that what happened in 2003 created an economic gain for their community, lasting several years.
But because that gain, and now the prospective loss, came from the decisions of a foreign-owned corporation, look for some Democrats and labor to seek to tie Wilmington’s current troubles to McCain.
Isaac Baker, an Obama spokesperson, said, “This episode represents everything that’s wrong with Washington, D.C.”
Joe Rugola, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, added, “Those jobs are on the chopping block because Sen. McCain and his campaign were involved in a deal that resulted in control of those positions being shifted to a foreign corporation, and there’s no getting around that.”
The McCain campaign insists that it was impossible to anticipate this development when McCain his lobbyist aides helped make this deal happen. Perhaps, but I wonder whether local voters will agree.