AP via Akron Beacon Journal - Ohio Senate candidates step up debate on intelligence

Ohio Senate candidates step up debate on intelligence

AP via Akron Beacon Journal

Ohio's U.S. Senate candidates have turned the most heated exchange from Sunday's nationally televised debate into several days of attack ads on their intelligence records.

GOP Sen. Mike DeWine hammered Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown on 10 votes he cast in the 1990s for reduced spending on spying and military intelligence. Brown, a congressman from northeast Ohio, complained that DeWine was taking old votes out of context to draw attention away from his own record on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

...Brown's campaign said Republicans Porter Goss and James Sensenbrenner have a similar record, having also voted to cut intelligence funding at the time. The congressman's campaign said Ohioans are more concerned with how the candidates have dealt with the current conflict, not the post-Cold War 1990s.

Sensenbrenner voted for many of the same intelligence funding cuts as Brown, and Goss, before he became director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sponsored failed legislation to slash intelligence personnel by 20 percent.

Brown released his own statewide TV ad Tuesday saying DeWine had missed nearly half of all public meetings by the Intelligence Committee.

"When our troops are on the line, Ohioans expect their senator to show up for duty and ensure that defense leaders are executing a winning strategy," Brown said in a news release Wednesday.

http://sherrodbrown.com/news/articles/716/