The Obama campaign released a radio ad in Ohio today tying John McCain to the closing of a Wilmington, Ohio shipping operation that will reportedly cost more than 8,000 jobs in the southwestern portion of the state. McCain was in Ohio this week, when a Cleveland Plain Dealer report linked McCain and campaign manager Rick Davis to a business deal that ultimately led to the ensuing job losses.

The Plain Dealer article stated that in 2003, Davis lobbied the Senate to allow DHL Express, a foreign company, to buy out Airborne Express, which ran operations at the Wilmington airport. As chairman of the Senate commerce committee, McCain helped get the bill passed.

"This was probably the most important development of the campaign this week," David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said on an afternoon conference call. Plouffe added, and the radio ad also notes this, that McCain had been in the area a month earlier and hadn't mentioned the connection. "That's why we think this is important. It's the furthest thing from straight talk you can imagine."

Listen to the ad here (.mp3), or read the script after the jump.

UPDATE: The McCain campaign held a conference call this afternoon in response to the ad. "It dramatically distorts what occurred in order to serve his own political end," said McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer. "The people of Ohio don't deserve that kind of leadership."

"We're not running ads attacking Barack Obama," Pfotenhauer added.

The campaign also included on the call a Wilmington citizen, Mary Houghtaling, who said Obama "should be ashamed of himself" for running the ad. Houghtaling seemed to be giving credit to McCain for a House Judiciary Committee hearing that was called today by chairman John Conyers (D-MI), and blamed Obama for not discussing the deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during his overseas trip last month. Houghtaling said she had asked McCain for help in the DHL matter during a town hall event in Ohio last month.

Obama's radio ad 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.