NYT: Focus of Connecticut House Race Shifts to Security

[DeepModem Mom]

Focus of Connecticut House Race Shifts to Security
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Published: September 24, 2006


(Steven Lee Miller for The New York Times)
State Senator Christopher S. Murphy says Representative Nancy Johnson is politicizing 9/11.

For much of this year, Representative Nancy L. Johnson, a moderate Republican from Connecticut, has run the kind of campaign she has run many times before in this swing district, focusing on domestic issues like health care and taxes, even as she distanced herself from her party’s conservative leaders in Congress.

But in recent days, Mrs. Johnson has taken her campaign down a sharply different path, shifting the battle with her Democratic opponent, Christopher S. Murphy, to a new front, national security.

The day after the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Mrs. Johnson began showing a television commercial assailing Mr. Murphy, a state senator, as weak on defense because he has criticized the Bush administration’s program of warrantless surveillance....

***

Democrats say her tactical shift shows that the race has tightened and that she is mounting a negative campaign out of desperation.

But Mrs. Johnson’s new focus on terrorism also shows that Republicans believe that national security is still a winning issue for them, even in a state where opposition to the war in Iraq is high, support for President Bush is low and their candidate is far better known for domestic policy....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/nyregion/24johnson.html

[AX10]

1. K & R!

[JerseygirlCT]

2. I hope this blows up in her face. Those commercials are

NASTY. Really mean, which is completely out of the character she usually tries to portray.

Chris has one that sort of answers the nasty one -- it's good.