By RAJU CHEBIUM
Gannett Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Gov. Nikki Haley urged President Barack ObamaTuesday to persuade the National Labor Relations Board to withdraw its complaint against The Boeing Co. Boeing should have the right to do business in any state and the NLRB 's complaint would hurt job creation in South Carolina, Haley said at a news conference at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We are demanding that the president respond to what the NLRB has done," Haley said at the Chamber, which sits across from the White House. "For the president not to weigh in on this and not to say that this is going to be harmful is a problem."Joining her were South Carolina GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-West Columbia, and the state's attorney general, Alan Wilson. They all condemned the NLRB's decision as politically motivated and joined Haley in urging the White House to intervene. "This is personal. When you go after a corporate citizen in South Carolina, it is personal to me because when they are not making profits, they are not hiring people by doing this against Boeing, forcing them to spend money on legal fees they should not be spending,"said Haley."They are keeping them from hiring more people which I need them to do. So it's a personal issue in South Carolina, it should be a personal issue for every governor in our country."Haley and the others have written to Obama. She said she'd meet with the president to press her case in person.DeMint and Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander are also introducing legislation to prevent the NLRB from penalizing companies that choose to do business in right-to-work states like South Carolina. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a freshman Republican, questioned whether the White House is targeting South Carolina because it's a Republican state. Columbia Chamber of Commerce President Ike McLeese says he too hopes the President will step in. He says telling private businesses where they can locate and how to do business could hurt not only the Midlands, but the entire country. If the NLRB is successful, McLeese says, it could take away the geographic benefits the Midlands could see from Boeing."We have tremendous aspirations for a lot of boeing suppliers coming here also and that could benefit the columbia area as well as Charleston and all the areas in between Columbia Charleston and maybe some even in the upstate,"he said.The White House declined comment today. It has said it's uninvolved in the matter, pointing out that the NLRB is an independent agency. The NLRB didn't respond to a request for comment today. In a statement Monday, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon urged Boeing and its supporters to "respect the legal process, rather than trying to litigate this case in the media and public arena."The NLRB complaint, which goes before a Seattle, Wash., administrative judge next month, says Boeing decided to locate a second assembly line to make the mammoth 787 jetliner in North Charleston to retaliate against union strikes in its Everett, Wash., plant. />
