In a debate that got moderately tense earlier on Monday, New Hampshire senatorial candidates Kelly Ayotte and Paul Hodes mostly focused on jobs and taxes, but managed to get in a few personal attacks along the way.
Ayotte, the Republican, repeatedly attacked Democrat Hodes, saing that “voting with Nancy Pelosi 94 percent of the time is not representing New Hampshire.”
Hodes, meanwhile, shot back that Ayotte represents corporate interests, and that “the millionaires, the oil executives, the Wall Street corporate raiders don’t need another U.S. senator. They have plenty of them in Washington already.”
Ayotte also hit Hodes for attending the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas, missing a vote on unemployment benefits: “Will you tell the voters of New Hampshire, who pay your salary, why you missed the vote on unemployment benefits and where you were?”
Hodes replied: “The vote was a vote that was absolutely going to pass, and I had a scheduling conflict and couldn’t make it for the vote.”
Pretty heated by New Hampshire standards, though the focus on jobs was par for the course of most of this autumn’s debates.
Watch the video below:
Jillian Rayfield
Jillian Rayfield is a Reporter/Blogger for TPM, and started as a News Intern in May 2009. She graduated from Cornell University in May 2008 with a degree in Film, and worked as a Research Assistant for a market research firm in London in between.
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