Debate becomes verbal slugfest
2006-10-20
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
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rss feedSen. Mike DeWine and his challenger, Rep. Sherrod Brown, filled their third debate with the stock phrases that have defined one of the country's most-watched campaigns, but decorum vanished at times, in part because this confrontation was the first with a live audience.
The face-to-face meeting at the Stranahan Theater Thursday night occasionally assumed the tone of competing political rallies. Followers segregated on opposite sides of an aisle took turns erupting in applause for their favorite candidate's positions.
But tension also surfaced over political advertisements in which DeWine and the Republican National Committee highlighted the failure of Brown's Democratic congressional campaign to pay $1,700 in state unemployment taxes for 1992.
The ads say the taxes went unpaid for 12 or 13 years.
Brown and the state said the taxes were paid in April 1994, four months after the state filed a lien.
Brown called DeWine a spineless politician who has accentuated the negative to appease Republican leaders and keep them from cutting off his campaign funds.
"This is the act of a desperate candidate who's way behind in the polls," Brown said. "It was a $1,700 mistake. As soon as we found out about it, we paid it."
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