Norwood resident Sandy Drews can see the benefit of Kroger’s $24.6 billion acquisition of the Albertsons grocery chain.

“I think it’ll be a good thing,” Drews said after shopping at Kroger’s Surrey Square store Friday. “Maybe they could work together to keep prices lower.”

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“We’re getting very weary from food inflation right now,” he said. “There’s certainly a lot of emotion around that. I’m not immune to it either. And there’s always concern that especially when you see competition diminish that pricing will go up.”

That’s how Morgan Harper sees it.

“We don’t anticipate this deal will go through without scrutiny and it should be blocked,” said Harper, a Columbus attorney who ran as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate this year. She lost in the May primary to Tim Ryan and now works as policy director for a Washington, D.C. think tank, American Economic Liberties Project.

“Right now, 60% of the grocery market is controlled by just 5 or 6 companies,” Harper said. “And Kroger and Albertsons are two of those companies. So, once they start combining, well, that’s when you start to see things that are approximating monopoly-like power.”

Harper doesn’t buy Kroger’s pledge to invest in lower prices and higher wages.

“A few years ago, there was a merger between Safeway and Albertsons where a lot of promises were made about how this wasn’t going to harm competition and it was going to benefit consumers and workers,” she said. “And those promises were proven to be wrong.”

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