Will Boeing’s loss of a major government contract hurt John McCain in Missouri?

The aerospace firm - and its St. Louis based defense-unit - took an enormous hit last week when the Pentagon announced that Boeing, despite being the favorite, had lost a $40 billion bid to supply the Air Force with fueling vessels.

Instead, the contract went to a European company, EADS - known for its Airbus line of jets - and a U.S. partner, Northrop Grumman.

So what’s that go to do with the GOP nominee for president?

Five years ago, Boeing had a $23.5 billion deal in place to lease the fuel tankers - planes that can gas-up other planes in midair - to the military. 

McCain - who was in town for a fundraiser on Monday - questioned the proposal. He led criticism that it would actually cost more to lease the tankers than own them outright.

That helped expose a far more stinging scandal for Boeing: That the firm offered a Air Force procurement office, Darleen Druyun, future employment while she inflated the price of the tanker contract.

Both Druyun and the Boeing executive that offered her the job, St. Louisan Michael M. Sears, admited to federal corruption charges.

McCain, since early on in the campaign, has trumpeted his involvement in exposing the Boeing lease plan, claiming that he saved taxpayers billions.

But now that the contract has been re-bid several years later, many of those jobs that would have gone to Boeing will now go overseas to EADS. And that could quickly become a liability for McCain in St. Louis and other cities with Boeing facilities.

Here’s what AP writer Matthew Daly wrote in a recent analysis:

McCain has run ads touting his role in fighting “pork” such as the tanker project and cited the deal in a recent GOP debate.

“I saved the taxpayers $6 billion in a bogus tanker deal,” he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoing the thoughts of many congressional Democrats, sees McCain’s role in a less positive light. She said the earlier tanker deal was “on course for Boeing” before McCain started railing against it.

“I mean, the thought was that it would be a domestic supplier for it,” Pelosi told reporters. “Senator McCain intervened, and now we have a situation where the contract may be - this work may be outsourced.”

Even Boeing’s Republican supporters are critical of McCain.

“John McCain will be the nominee and I will support him, but if John McCain believes that Airbus or EADS is the company for our Air Force tanker program he’s flat-out wrong - and I’ll tell him that to his face,” said Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash.

Missouri’s senior senator, Kit Bond, has entered the fray, writing a letter last week to a Air National Guard, questioning the process behind awarding the air-tanker contract.

But Bond has not, publicly at least, joined the crowd upset with McCain.

McCain in Frontenac on Monday