New Obama Radio Ad Blasts McCain Over DHL Lobbying

The Obama campaign has launched a radio ad to run in Ohio, discussing John McCain’s extraordinary intervention on behalf of a foreign shipping company – DHL and Deutsche Post – that is now putting 8,200 jobs in Wilmington, Ohio at risk:

Here is the script:

ANNCR: July 9. 2008. Portsmouth, Ohio. Here's what John McCain said about DHL’s plans to eliminate 8,200 Ohio jobs.

JOHN MCCAIN (from Ohio town hall): I gotta look you in the eye and give you straight talk. I don't know if I can stop it or not or if it will be stopped.

ANNCR: But there’s something John McCain's not telling you: It was McCain who used his influence in the Senate to help foreign-owned DHL buy a U.S. company and gain control over the jobs that are now on the chopping block in Ohio.

And that's not all: McCain's campaign manager was the top lobbyist for the DHL deal ... helped push it through. His firm was paid $185,000 to lobby McCain and other Senators.

Now 8,200 Ohioans are facing layoffs, and foreign-owned DHL doesn't care.

JOHN MCCAIN (from Ohio town hall): I gotta look you in the eye and give you straight talk.

ANNCR: John McCain. Same old politics. Same failed policies.

BARACK OBAMA: I'm Barack Obama, candidate for President, and I approved this message. Paid for by Obama for America.

UPDATE: In a press conference call just now, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the breaking story of McCain's past intervention on behalf of foreign-owned DHL the "most important development in the campaign to date." He pointed out that Ohio is a "must-win state for McCain," and that McCain's visit to the state has been "dogged by questions" about the matter. What makes it so relevant, he said, is that McCain was in Wilmington a month ago and didn't say a word about his or his campaign manager's close relationship to DHL and past work on DHL's behalf. That is the "furthest thing from "straight talk" you can imagine," he said. Ultimately, voters in Ohio are "hungry for change" and "looking out for someone who will fight for the middle class," not someone who has been part of the status quo in Washington for 26 years and whose campaign manager was one of the biggest lobbyists in the capital.

ODP Chair Chris Redfern also spoke on the call, calling McCain "part of a broken system in Washington D.C." under which "lobbyists have their way while ordinary Ohioans get left behind." McCain and his lobbyist-turned-campaign manager "made extraordinary efforts" to help DHL in 2003, but has not joined Sen. Sherrod Brown and Gov. Ted Strickland in working hard to get DHL to back out of the job-killing deal. McCain has not answered Brown's question as to why he didn't tell Ohioans about his close relationship with DHL before, and has basically shrugged off the Wilmington workers' pleas for McCain to intervene on their behalf.

Redfern also issued a press release on the issue earlier today, full text after the break.Here is the statement from ODP Chair Chris Redfern on McCain and DHL:

John McCain's so-called straight talk was noticeably absent yesterday when he visited Ohio.

He never addressed the role he and his campaign manager played in putting DHL in control of Ohio jobs in the first place. He never answered Senator Brown's question: why didn't John McCain and Rick Davis ever disclose their involvement to the people of Ohio when they were first asked about it? And he never said whether he thinks it's appropriate that his campaign manager's lobbying firm was paid $600,000 from a company that is now putting 8,000 Ohio jobs in jeopardy.

John McCain told Ohioans that he's the candidate who puts 'country first.' But having fought so hard on behalf of a foreign shipping company that is putting Ohio jobs at risk, Ohio voters need to ask themselves ... which country?