Presidential Candidate Duncan Hunter Ready for New Hampshire Debate

Press Release

Presidential Candidate Duncan Hunter Ready for New Hampshire Debate

Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter,showing renewed strength in the race for the GOP nomination, is poised for his second New Hampshire debate on Wednesday.

He arrived in the state on Tuesday, fresh from an appearance at a "Fight for Victory" pro-troop rally in Carson City, Nev. Hunter is a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, and he served with the 173rd Airborne and 75th Army Rangers in Vietnam. His son, a Marine captain, is serving his third tour in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, the California congressman took top honors in the first Republican Party straw poll in Texas harvesting over 41% of the votes. Former Senator Fred Thompson, took second taking nearly 21 percent of the vote. Texas Congressman Ron Paul was third with about 17 percent of the vote.

The New Hampshire Republican Party and Fox News Channel have set up Wednesday's debate The 90-minute event is scheduled to start at 9 p.m., and it will be held in the Whittemore Center at the University of New Hampshire's Durham campus.

All of the declared GOP candidates are scheduled to appear, and the event will be telecast live on the Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio. Hunter, in his first televised New Hampshire debate in June, touched on all of the major issues facing American families. The debate was carried by CNN. He said progress will be made in the Iraqi war when all 129 battalions of Iraqis join the fight. "Let's get the Iraqis into the fight, give them some experience and then turn the patrolling over to them."

Hunter contends once reliability is established in the Iraqi military, they will be capable of rotating into the battlefield throughout Iraq, displacing U.S. combat forces, "that's how we leave Iraq, which will amount to an unprecedented success in the most difficult region of the new era."

Hunter was questioned by audience members who had lost relatives in the war. He told them, "I thank you for your tremendous sacrifice. This country owes you a great debt of gratitude. My son, Duncan D., has served two tours in Iraq, and is in Afghanistan now serving his third tour. I have a sense of the experiences of a military family."

Hunter was the "go-to-man" on the issue of immigration. Wolf Blitzer, the CNN moderator, kept redirecting the discussion to Hunter, mainly because Hunter has led the way for tight border security and for extraditing illegal immigrants.

Hunter reminded the national audience that he drafted legislation that was signed into law by the President which mandates the construction of 854 miles of double fencing across the smugglers routes of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Hunter noted that the Department of Homeland Security has the money and the mandate, but "the administration has a 'case of the slows' in getting the fence built." He pledged that he would see that the fence is constructed within six month after his election as president.

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