by hilzoy
A couple of days ago the Ohio Democrats released this ad:
It shows footage from the town meeting described here:
“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.””
Interspersed with the footage are screens that say:
“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.”
And:
“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.”
— Joe Rugola, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO”
And:
“The firm of Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, earned $185,000 lobbying for foreign ownership, and $405,000 after the deal passed Congress”
It’s a very powerful ad. The sight of McCain saying “I don’t know if I can stop it. That’s some straight talk. Some more straight talk? I doubt it”, about a deal he and his campaign manager were involved in making possible, is jarring. And reminding voters that McCain is surrounded by ex-lobbyists cannot help his efforts to convince them that he is a maverick who recognizes that Washington is broken and wants to change it. Especially since, in this case, one of the people McCain’s campaign manager was paid to lobby was, well, John McCain.
That said, when I first saw the ad I wondered whether there was less to this story than met the eye. To be clear: I absolutely think that it’s a mistake to have lobbyists (including lobbyists who, like Davis, are presently “on leave”) running campaigns and serving as senior advisors to candidates. I could be persuaded to make an exception for people who are paid a flat salary to lobby for some worthwhile cause, like the environment or vaccinations for third world children or workplace safety, from which neither they nor the people who pay them will personally profit, but I think that people who have been paid, and might well be paid again, by private corporations or foreign governments should not manage anyone’s campaign.
That said, I do not have a problem with private employers deciding to relocate their facilities, or with foreign ownership of companies that operate in the United States. Moreover, Davis’ lobbying seems to have occurred between 2003 and 2005, and McCain’s involvement was in 2003, so it seemed worth asking whether, at the time, there was any reason to think that the deal might actually cost Ohioans jobs. Because if it looked like a good deal for Ohio at the time, that would make the story told in the ad look very different — though it would leave intact the general issue of having lobbyists running the McCain campaign.
I was also curious what on earth Congress had to do with what sounded like a normal deal. So I cranked up Lexis-Nexis. Short answer: yes, there were concerns about the effect on jobs at the time. What’s below the fold is an explanation of the deal, and of those concerns; I suspect it will be of interest mostly to people for whom the ad raised the kinds of questions it did for me.