--- Advertisement ---

Landrieu, Kennedy Meet in First T.V. Debate
10/12/08 - 10:38 PM
 RSS Feed
click for larger image

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu accused her Republican opponent, state Treasurer John Kennedy, of trying to ride the wave of popular Louisiana support for John McCain rather than his own ideas, as Kennedy continued Sunday to put the presidential race front and center in the Senate race.

In the first statewide televised debate between the Senate candidates, Kennedy repeatedly talked of Landrieu’s endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his own support for the positions of McCain, the GOP nominee. Kennedy said Obama doesn’t represent the view of most Louisiana voters.

“If you support bedrock, conservative change, John McCain and I are your guys,” Kennedy said.

Landrieu defended her endorsement of Obama, but she said presidential endorsements shouldn’t be a central focus of the Senate race, leading up to the Nov. 4 election.

“John, I know you’re trying very hard, but Sen. McCain’s coattails are not long enough for you,” Landrieu told Kennedy, generating the only round of applause to interrupt the debate during the night.

“This race is between the two of us. You wouldn’t know that for listening to him,” she said.

McCain holds strong support in Louisiana, while state polls have showed only mixed support and high disapproval ratings for Obama in the state. Kennedy has made the presidential endorsements a central issue in the Senate campaign, running ads that talk of Obama’s “liberal” voting record and Landrieu’s backing of the Illinois senator. Kennedy ends some of his campaign ads with the disclaimer saying that he approved the ad but also noting that he supports McCain.

Before an audience of about 200 college students, the two main candidates in the Senate race traded attacks about campaign contributions from Wall Street, wasteful spending and farm aid.

Kennedy framed Landrieu as a liberal candidate who supported large tax hikes, opposed conservative judges and nearly topped the list of the Senate’s pork barrel spenders.

Landrieu, seeking a third term in office, described herself as a moderate senator with an independent voting record while criticizing Kennedy as a political opportunist who changed his party and rhetoric to try to get to Congress. The state treasurer switched parties last year after running unsuccessfully four years
ago for the U.S. Senate as a populist Democrat.

Both candidates opposed the $700 billion financial market bailout approved by Congress, but they differed on how they thought the country’s financial problems could be eased.

Kennedy said federal officials should suspend accounting rules that financial industry representatives blame for exacerbating the crisis and the federal government should form a quasi-public corporation to buy up bad mortgages from banks with stock in that corporation that could be used to shore up capital reserves, rather than taxpayer dollars.

Landrieu said she supports government-guaranteed loans between banks and supports the Bush administration plan to use federal tax dollars to buy stocks in banks to shore up the financial system.

“We don’t have to nationalize our entire banking system. This is not Russia,” Kennedy replied.

The candidates also split on foreign policy, when asked if they would support a pre-emptive strike on a country that seemed to pose a threat to the United States.

Kennedy said he’d support a pre-emptive strike “if the threat’s sufficient” and then talked about why the U.S. should stay in Iraq. He said if the U.S. left Iraq too quickly, Iran would take over the country and head into a nuclear war with America.

“I don’t care what the CIA says or doesn’t say, I believe Iran has nuclear weapons,” Kennedy said. “We are facing a nuclear threat unlike any we’ve ever seen since the Cold War.”

Landrieu didn’t support the troop increase that President Bush ordered into Iraq. She said the United States needs to find a way to leave Iraq “with dignity and with strength,” while more troops are needed for Afghanistan. She didn’t say whether she would support a pre-emptive strike on another country.

They disagreed about changes made to the Federal Emergency Management Agency since Hurricane Katrina devastated southeast Louisiana in 2005.

Landrieu, chair of the homeland security subcommittee that oversees FEMA, said she’s worked to improve the agency’s bureaucracy. She said FEMA’s response was much better this year for hurricanes Gustav and Ike, but she also said more fixes were needed.

Kennedy said Landrieu hadn’t done nearly enough to improve an agency widely derided for its response to Katrina, and he said she had the power to force sweeping changes with her committee assignment.

“There’s not a single solitary person in Washington D.C., not one, that has more control over FEMA than Sen. Landrieu,” he said.

In other areas:

-Landrieu attacked Kennedy for taking $350,000 in campaign contributions from people who come before the state Bond Commission that Kennedy chairs. Kennedy talked of Landrieu’s contributions from collapsed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been accused of financial mismanagement in the wake of the housing market crisis.

-Kennedy supported a health care plan that would give families tax credits of up to $5,000 to buy health insurance. Landrieu supported a plan that would give subsidies to people to buy into a government-backed health insurance system.

The debate was hosted by Louisiana Public Broadcasting and the Council for A Better Louisiana. Kennedy and Landrieu will meet in another TV debate Wednesday.

This entry has been viewed 302 times.

User Comments
KALB.com requires that you be a registered site member to post comments and content.
Why Register?
First, we are not being sneaky and gathering your email or other information to sell to telemarketers or e-mail spam companies.

Registration on this site is required simply to allow us to keep people who would post discriminatory, threatening and harassing messages and comments from doing it again.

By having user registration, we hope to provide you with a better user experience. Please view kalb.com's full Terms & Conditions