When I was traveling with the McCain campaign last month in Ohio, I was struck by this moment at one of his town meetings. It seemed, at the time, like some of that trademark “straight talk”:
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.”
But there was one detail that McCain neglected to mention. It turns out the Republican nominee had been an advocate of the controversial foreign acquisition that some in the community now blame for all those lost jobs. Here’s how the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Stephen Koff explains the politically ticklish situation that McCain now faces as a result:
When Republican presidential candidate John McCain meets Thursday with citizens and officials in Wilmington, Ohio, he won’t need a playbook to understand why they’re worried about deep job losses at the local freight airport.
Little known to those 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.
“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,” said Joe Rugola, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO.