PHILADELPHIA — Police say a Philadelphia man is charged with murder after allegedly shooting a neighbor in a dispute over dog waste.WASHINGTON – Dan Coats, one of five contenders for the Republican Senate nomination, is reminding Hoosiers that he’s running for a job he left in 1998 because “politics is not my life.”
In TV commercials his campaign said are running on cable and broadcast stations throughout the state beginning today, Coats also defends his record as being anti-abortion and pro-gun – a record one opponent and some members of the tea party movement question.
In the ad, Coats says he “never thought I’d run for office again,” but that President Obama is taking the country in the wrong direction.
Coats was in the Senate from 1989 to 1998. Before that he was in the U.S. House, representing northeast Indiana. When he announced his retirement in 1996, Coats said that “when I first ran for the Senate, I said that politics is not my life. I said that public service is an honor, but it should not be a lifelong career. … I want to leave when I am young enough to contribute somewhere else, young enough to resume a career outside government. I want to leave when there is still a chance to follow God’s leading to something new.”
In the 30-second commercial, Coats describes himself as conservative, an opponent of higher taxes and big spending and a proponent of life and the Second Amendment.
But John Hostettler, also a contender for the GOP nomination, has criticized Coats’ votes in 1993 for a ban on assault weapons and a five-day waiting period for gun purchases.
In addition, Hostettler said in an ad posted on his Web page, Coats voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a “radical” abortion supporter, and voted to allow U.S. money to be spent on abortions overseas.
Monica Boyer, a leader of Kosciusko Silent No More, a tea party group, said discomfort with Coats’ record is widespread because of those votes and because the national Republican Party seems to be trying to “shove candidates down our throat.”
Pete Seat, Coats’ campaign spokesman, declined to say where the commercials are running. None of the other candidates has launched TV commercials. The primary is May 4.
