State favors McCain despite Boeing act

Cutting off tanker contract riles some in Wichita

? For the third time in three presidential debates, Republican nominee John McCain has cited shooting down an air tanker contract, which would have brought hundreds of jobs to Wichita, as one his biggest Senate triumphs.

But his comments and other McCain ties to Boeing Co.’ s chief rival, Airbus, seem to have done little to diminish his chances of winning Kansas in the November election.

In Wednesday night’s debate against Democratic nominee Barack Obama, McCain took credit for halting a Department of Defense deal in which Boeing would have leased air tankers to the Air Force. That contract would have created about 1,100 jobs in Wichita.

“I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion by fighting a deal for a couple of years, as you might recall, that was a sweetheart deal between an aircraft manufacturer (Boeing), DOD, and people ended up in jail,” McCain said in Wednesday’s debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

The language paralleled statements he made in the previous two debates:

¢ Oct. 7, Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. “I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion in a deal for an Air Force tanker that was done in a corrupt fashion.”

¢ Sept. 26, University of Mississippi. “I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion by fighting a contract that was negotiated between Boeing and DOD that was completely wrong. And we fixed it and we killed it and the people ended up in federal prison.”

In March, The Associated Press reported that several key members of the McCain campaign – including a husband-wife team serving as his finance chair and finance director – had worked as lobbyists for Airbus, which is competing with Boeing on the tanker deal.

The tanker contract remains a sore spot for some Wichita aircraft workers, many of whom sported “Machinists for Obama” buttons, bumper stickers and T-shirts during a rally Thursday for striking Boeing workers.

But McCain continues to hold a strong lead over Obama in Kansas. A Rasmussen poll released Wednesday showed McCain ahead 54 percent to 41 percent, one of the biggest leads he has anywhere in the nation.

“It’s because there are too many stupid Republicans in Kansas,” said Joni Pierce, secretary/treasurer of Machinists Local 839. She works at Spirit AeroSystems, a former Boeing division that remains heavily dependent on Boeing for business.

And while McCain’s opposition to Boeing on the tanker deal may sting in Wichita, people in rural areas of the state don’t really see it as their concern, said Steve Rooney, president of Machinists District No. 70.

“All over western Kansas, that’s pretty much what you see,” he said.

Ken Ciboski, a professor of political science at Wichita State University and the president of the Republican Sedgwick County Pachyderm Club, said he thinks party loyalty and rural Kansas disinterest is trumping local concerns over McCain’s role in the tanker fight.

“I don’t think that’s going to have much of an impact in the state,” Ciboski said. “People in other parts of Kansas kind of look down on Wichita with a little scorn.”

The underlying issue is the still unresolved effort by the Air Force to find a plane to replace the aging KC-135 as the workhorse of its air-refueling fleet.