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Germany may just become a permanent topic in the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack Obama already paid a visit to the country a few weeks back. And John McCain also has serious business to attend to in Germany, thinks Sherrod Brown. The Senator from Ohio urged the Republican candidate to send his campaign manager overseas to convince the parent company of DHL, Deutsche Post, to keep DHL's air freight hub in Wilmington, Ohio.
"Rick Davis earned hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for DHL," Brown, who supports Barack Obama, said. "Now it's time to see if he and John McCain will use their considerable clout to lobby for Ohio families." Brown was refering to the fact that Davis, now McCain's campaign manager and McCain himself had lobbied Deutsche Post and DHL's effort to buy Airborne Express and its hub in Wilmington in 2003, which was detailed first by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Ohio's Republican Senator George Voinovich called upon the German government for help: "We are going to need some involvement by the German government," he said, adding that the involvement of both McCain and Obama indicated it merited global attention. Voinovich didn't elaborate what the involvement by the German government could look like.
DHL announced in May that it plans to outsource some of its operations to competitor UPS, which would render the Wilmington hub unnecessary. The move threatens 8,000 jobs in the region.
Responding to Brown's criticism, the McCain campaign said DHL's current plans were not foreseeable in 2003 and added that Davis had not lobbied for Bonn-based Deutsche Post since 2005. McCain was scheduled to appear in Wilmington to talk about DHL's plans on Thursday. |
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