Apparently OT: Rival Chains Secretly Fund Opposition to Wal-Mart

My first thought after reading this Wall Street Journal article was wondering if local chains such as Food Lion or Harris Teeter have ever hired Saint Consulting Group, oh say, in an effort to keep Wal-Mart out of Waxhaw.

A grocery chain with nine stores in the area had hired Saint Consulting Group to secretly run the antidevelopment campaign. Saint is a specialist at fighting proposed Wal-Marts, and it uses tactics it describes as "black arts."

As Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has grown into the largest grocery seller in the U.S., similar battles have played out in hundreds of towns like Mundelein. Local activists and union groups have been the public face of much of the resistance. But in scores of cases, large supermarket chains including Supervalu Inc., Safeway Inc. and Ahold NV have retained Saint Consulting to block Wal-Mart, according to hundreds of pages of Saint documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with former employees.

There's no evidence to support local ties to the Saint Consulting Group, but it was my first thought given the successful defeat of a Waxhaw Wal-mart some years ago much to my disappointment. Either way, it is an interesting article about the astroturfing of this issue by Wal-Mart's competitors in other parts of the country, so it's worth a read regardless.