Nethercutt criticized for anti-Murray ad

SPOKANE – Three retired U.S. Coast Guard officers are accusing U.S. Senate candidate George Nethercutt of distorting incumbent Democratic Sen. Patty Murray’s voting record on protecting the nation’s shores.

The officers sent a letter to the Republican congressman earlier this week, asking that his campaign pull a radio ad saying Murray cut funding for the Coast Guard.

“Senator Murray has been a leader in improving our nation’s security and providing support to the Coast Guard,” the officers wrote Nethercutt. “The ad you are running is simply not true, and we request that you remove it from the airwaves.”

The letter, signed by Rear Adm. John Lockwood, Rear Adm. David Spade and Commander Kenneth Armstrong, was sent in response to one of Nethercutt’s campaign ads, which contends that Murray “led the effort to cut the president’s Coast Guard budget after 9-11.”

A Nethercutt spokesman stood by the ad and said the campaign had no intention of pulling it.

Nethercutt claims that a budget Murray proposed in 2002 as chairwoman of a Senate Transportation Appropriations subcommittee gave the Coast Guard $121 million less than President Bush had requested.

The ad bases its claim not on how much the Coast Guard received, but where the money came from.

Murray said she helped increase Coast Guard funding above what President Bush and the House requested last year by negotiating another $300 million in defense funding for the Coast Guard.

“It’s the Transportation Committee’s responsibility to appropriate the money for the Coast Guard, not to find other committees to appropriate it,” Nethercutt spokesman Alex Conant said. “Murray’s taking credit for another committee’s work.”

Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass countered that the Coast Guard routinely gets money set aside for defense.

“At the end of the day, the budget with Senator Murray’s name on it has more money in it than the House budget or the president’s budget, and the Coast Guard is better for it,” Glass said.