* That’s because despite making extravagant claims about Mango’s skills as a job-creator, Mango’s campaign couldn’t produce a single example – anywhere in Pennsylvania – where he had done that. In fact, the record of Mango’s former employer, McKinsey & Co, suggests that they are wizards in the black arts of corporate downsizing.
* We asked Mango’s campaign – twice – to provide concrete examples to back up that fulsome praise. It could not.
* So when Team Mango talks about “[advising] businesses right here in Pennsylvania how to grow their businesses in the commonwealth,” what it means to them and what impact it has on actual workers appear to be two very different things.
Pennlive: Friends call this GOP guv hopeful a ‘job-creator.’ His old firm helped companies shed workers by the hundreds
By John L. Micek
Good Monday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
If there’s one constant during campaign season, it’s that office-seekers look to make maximum hay out of their endorsements from other elected officials and party VIPs.
While these endorsements tend to have zero effect on the average voter, they have a very important effect early on in a campaign.
For loyalists and activists, they’re an indicator of a candidate’s viability and base of support. For donors, they’re a sign that they’re worth breaking out the checkbook.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul Mango, an Allegheny County businessman, is no different. But a recent endorsement by a trio of Republican county commissioners might have caused him an unintended headache.
That’s because despite making extravagant claims about Mango’s skills as a job-creator, Mango’s campaign couldn’t produce a single example – anywhere in Pennsylvania – where he had done that.
In fact, the record of Mango’s former employer, McKinsey & Co, suggests that they are wizards in the black arts of corporate downsizing.
In a two-minute-plus web spot, GOP commissioners Diana Irey Vaughan of Washington County; Jeff Haste of Dauphin County, and Christian Leinbach of Berks County, gather to sing Mango’s praises as an alternative to both the Democratic Wolf administration and the other GOP hopeful in the race (at least for right now), Sen. Scott Wagner of York County.
At the 28-second mark, Leinbach says Mango “knows how to turn businesses around that are struggling, and believe me, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been struggling.”
At the 31-second mark in the spot, Irey Vaughan praises Mango for “[being] out there creating new jobs, expanding businesses and retaining businesses here in the commonwealth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
At the 55-second mark, Haste says Mango has the right vision for the state and will “use the workforce that we have in Pennsylvania that is second to none,” to achieve it.”
We asked Mango’s campaign – twice – to provide concrete examples to back up that fulsome praise. It could not.
“Paul Mango started and grew the health care practice at McKinsey and he has advised businesses right here in Pennsylvania on how to grow their business in the Commonwealth,” campaign adviser Matt Beynon said in an email. “His years of private sector experience with major corporations have led to an understanding of what is necessary to attract and keep well-paying jobs here in Pennsylvania.”
When we went back in a second email to again ask Beynon to provide a solitary example of where Mango had created or retained jobs, he said this:
“Paul led the growth of a multi-hundred million dollar business at McKinsey & Company and in the course of this hired hundreds of employees over 8 years as the head of this business,” he said. “He also advised scores of clients on growth strategies both within and beyond Pennsylvania.”
In the journalism trade, we call that an evasion.
And it might be because Mango’s former employer, McKinsey & Co., has a well-earned reputation for being lay-off artists.
“McKinsey might be the single greatest legitimizer of mass layoffs in history–although that would be pretty much impossible to measure. Companies do need to lay off workers in tough times, that’s a simple fact,” Duff McDonald, author of “The Firm,” an inside look at McKinsey, told Time magazine in 2013.
“But the whole idea of corporate powerhouses laying off thousands of people during good times simply to juice profits–and, naturally, executive compensation–is something that McKinsey has definitely had a hand in as well,” McDonald told Time’s Gary Belsky.
In a 2009 story, the late Gawker.com ran down some of the lay-offs that bear McKinsey’s fingerprints. Among other places, McKinsey trimmed jobs at Cabelvision, First Boston and even the New York City schools.
McKinsey, which popularized the term “the war for talent” also isn’t shy about putting its money where its mouth is. In 2001, the company shed 201 of its own support staffers, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
So when Team Mango talks about “[advising] businesses right here in Pennsylvania how to grow their businesses in the commonwealth,” what it means to them and what impact it has on actual workers appear to be two very different things.
Read the article here.