Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is in Wilmington, OH and being forced to address DHL’s merger with Airborne-Express, which may cost roughly 8,000 jobs in the area. In a private meeting, “residents will ask McCain for help in stopping DHL’s proposal to quit using the airport as a hub,” which would put the air park out of business.
In a townhall on July 9, a resident asked McCain what he would do to mitigate the merger’s effects on the area. “I want to be able to keep our nonprofits alive,” she said, crying. McCain said the impact of the merger on area jobs is a “terrible blow”:
MCCAIN:This is a terrible blow. Um, if there’s an anti-trust implication that’s associated with this, I certainly would seek a thorough investigation … I’ve got to look you in the eye and give you some straight talk; I don’t know if I can stop it or not. Or if it will be stopped it. … In fact, some more straight talk: I doubt it. Ok?
“In the meantime, there are manufacturing jobs that have been lost all over the state of Ohio, and it’s been a terrible trauma,” he said. Watch it:
Today, McCain is dealing with the fallout from the merger. But five years ago, McCain’s campaign manager lobbied heavily for the deal. The AP reports that Davis “lobbied the Senate to accept the proposal by DHL to buy Airborne Express for $1.05 billion.” Davis’s lobbying firm reaped the benefits:
Filings in the Senate show Davis’ lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, was hired to help both companies deal with Congress, where objections over DHL’s foreign ownership arose. Davis and a partner earned their firm $185,000 for the DHL-Airborne Express work that year, records show.
“McCain took steps that helped Davis’s clients” and thwarted Sen. Ted Stevens’s (R-AK) “effort to insert language into legislation that would prohibit foreign-controlled companies such as DHL from holding certain military contracts,” the Washington Post reported in June.
Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) called the situation “one of the worst job catastrophes that any community in this nation is facing.” Will McCain deliver straight talk about the role that he and his campaign manager had in helping shuttle through the DHL deal?
Update
“McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, also had a role in the DHL deal with Airborne Express. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain urged then-Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to abandon proposed legislation that would have prohibited foreign-owned carriers from flying U.S. military equipment or troops. Airborne Express said the measure was aimed at torpedoing its merger with DHL.”
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