McCain to meet behind closed doors in Wilmington
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
When presidential candidate John McCain visits Wilmington to meet with people concerned about the pending loss of at least 8,000 jobs at DHL's Wilmington air freight hub, he will conduct the meeting in private.
Wilmington Mayor David Raizk, a member of a task force trying to save the DHL jobs, said he prefers the private forum that McCain will provide for the meeting Thursday afternoon, Aug. 7, at Wilmington College.
McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, campaigned Wednesday in Jackson, Ohio. He plans a stop in Lima on Thursday before heading to Wilmington. He and Democratic opponent Barack Obama have been campaigning across Ohio and Michigan in recent weeks.
Raizk said the meeting Thursday will allow McCain between 30 and 60 minutes to hear from DHL workers who stand to lose their jobs when the German-owned company replaces two cargo airlines in Wilmington by switching to United Parcel Service. DHL and UPS are negotiating a contract and hope to conclude it this fall.
"We're just glad for the opportunity to get both presidential candidates' attention to the problem we have here," Raizk said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "I think the main thing is the fact that he's coming here."
UPS has said it will handle DHL's U.S. express package airlift from the UPS hub in Louisville, Ky., wiping out the DHL jobs in Wilmington that Ohio helped support with millions of dollars in grants and highway projects. The Wilmington hub is the largest employer in the area.
Opponents of the proposed DHL-UPS deal are backing efforts by Ohio politicians to get the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether it would violate antitrust law by reducing competition in the U.S. express delivery market. DHL said it thinks no government approval would be needed because an agreement with UPS would be a customer-vendor deal, and that DHL and UPS would still compete for customers. DHL said it hopes to reduce $1 billion-a-year losses in the United States by hiring UPS to fly DHL's packages between destinations.
Joseph Teuchert, a Wilmington-based pilot for ASTAR Air Cargo that is a contract delivery carrier for DHL in the United States, said he also expects to be in the meeting Thursday with McCain.
Raizk said he and others trying to preserve the Wilmington jobs met privately with Obama just before the Illinois senator's public appearance July 11 at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton.
McCain plans to make a public statement before leaving Wilmington, said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for McCain's Ohio campaign.
Press coverage inside the meeting will be restricted to a national pool reporter and a local reporter from the Wilmington News Journal, who are to share their accounts with other journalists afterward. There isn't enough room in the meeting area to allow other reporters in, Lindsay said.
It's questionable whether any president could stop DHL's plan to hire UPS and dump the Wilmington employees, said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who studies national political campaigns.
"Would any president let this happen if it were in his power to stop it? No," Sabato said. "It's all about free-trade agreements, and the like."
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reported on Wednesday that Washington lobbyist Rick Davis, now McCain's top campaign adviser, made hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees lobbying Congress to allow the 2003 deal in which Germany-based Deutsche Post bought Airborne Express to form DHL's U.S. business. The Washington Post had a similar report in June.
In 2003, some in Congress had expressed concern about foreign ownership of a U.S. delivery company, before the DHL purchase of Airborne Express was allowed.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, noting the Cleveland news report, publicly urged McCain on Wednesday to send Davis to Germany so that Davis could use his contacts to lobby for preserving the Wilmington jobs.
The McCain campaign responded: "John McCain is visiting Wilmington to hear firsthand the challenges facing working families in the community."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
