Candidates spar over ‘negative’ ad

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz on Saturday knocked U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa for what he called the first negative advertisement in their Democratic primary, a postcard that reminds voters of Schatz’s support for the Bipartisan Budget Act, which extended cuts in Medicare.

The postcard describes Hanabusa as a champion for Social Security and Medicare. It paraphrases an article in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in March that dissected the candidate’s views on Social Security, an issue Schatz has sought to make a theme in the campaign.

Rather than quote the newspaper, the Schatz campaign says, the postcard essentially repeats Hanabusa’s argument from the article that the Bipartisan Budget Act extended Medicare cuts and reduced the cost-of-living allowance for working-age military retirees.

The Bipartisan Budget Act, a compromise supported by all Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama last December, extended 2 percent cuts to Medicare providers by two years — from 2021 to 2023 — but did not reduce benefits in the entitlement program for the elderly and disabled.

Hanabusa was the only member of the state’s congressional delegation to vote against the act, which leaders of both political parties credited with averting another federal government shutdown.

"The false attacks in Colleen’s negative ad aren’t what disappoint me most about her decision to go negative in this campaign," Schatz said in a statement. "What’s most discouraging about Colleen’s negative ad is that Democrats ought to be attacking Hawaii’s challenges, not attacking fellow Democrats. She has launched the first negative ad of this campaign, but there’s still time for Colleen to make it the last. That’s her choice."

Peter Boylan, a spokesman for the Hanabusa campaign, said it was the Schatz campaign that first went negative with a status memo released last October that disparaged the Hanabusa campaign as "badly foundering."

Boylan described the postcard as comparative, not negative, and said the Schatz campaign and its allies "have been trying to distort Colleen’s position on Social Security from the start."

Boylan also took a swipe at Andy Winer, Schatz’s chief of staff, who was a consultant to Pacific Resource Partnership when the group conducted a negative advertising campaign against former Gov. Ben Cayetano during the mayoral election in 2012.

"It is ironic that a U.S. senator who employs one of the principal architects of the most expensive political smear campaign in the history of Hawaii considers a postcard quoting a newspaper article to be a negative attack," he said in a statement.

Hanabusa and her advisers have accused the Schatz campaign and the senator’s allies of scaring seniors on Social Security. Schatz and his allies have countered, however, that there are important differences between the two Democrats on the issue, since Schatz has proposed expanding Social Security benefits while Hanabusa has been open to ideas such as Simpson-Bowles, a bipartisan plan to reduce the federal deficit through tax and entitlement reforms.

After Schatz made Social Security the subject of his first television ad, Hanabusa released her own television ad vowing to protect the entitlement programs and cautioning against playing politics with the issue. The Hanabusa campaign’s postcard is a variation on the same message, but ties Schatz to Medicare cuts through his vote.

The congresswoman had initially voted for the cuts to Medicare providers as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, a decision she has since regretted.