Kerry and Bush camps trade accusations
KETCHUM, Idaho -- Senator John F. Kerry spent yesterday afternoon on a 22-mile bike ride through the Idaho mountains, but his campaign advisers shrugged off any thought of the dog-days-of-August leisure activity, renewing their familiar attack on President Bush's fund-raising ties to corporations.
And while Bush was delivering a speech in Ohio yesterday about redeploying US troops from Europe and Asia, his campaign recruited the speaker of the House, Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, to repeat Republican criticisms that Kerry missed an estimated 76 percent of public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings between 1993 and 2000, when the Massachusetts Democrat was a member of the panel.
The purpose of Hastert's comments was to increase Republican pressure on Kerry over his Senate record on intelligence, a major issue for both presidential candidates. They also coincided with the first broadcast in 19 battleground states of a new Bush television ad, titled ''
Hastert yesterday, echoing previous comments from six GOP senators, called on Kerry to authorize release of his attendance record for closed-door intelligence committee meetings during his eight years on the panel -- which Republicans expect to be spotty.
''The most basic responsibility of a lawmaker is just showing up," Hastert said. ''Based on John Kerry's attendance record on the Intelligence Committee, Kerry didn't even do that."
Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton dismissed Hastert's remarks yesterday, calling them an attempt ''to distract from the president's four years of failure."
''This isn't about getting information to the public. It's about the Bush campaign trying to mislead them," Clanton said.
The Kerry campaign, in turn, sought to gain mileage from newspaper articles last weekend highlighting a series of regulatory measures that appeared to favor corporate interests that have donated money to Bush over time.
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.
