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Lentz & Meehan agree on Israel—not much else

HAVERTOWN—It was a relatively tame display of two candidates expressing their solidarity with and support for Israel and its its security. But as the focus shifted to economic policy, the debate between Democrat Bryan Lentz and Pat Meehan turned heated.

By the time the hour was up Tuesday night, the two 7th District rivals had laid out starkly contrasting visions. And with Lentz aggressively looking to keep Meehan on the defensive for much of the duration, the different political styles of the two bitter opponents were displayed more clearly than ever before for a group of about 50 voters in the Delaware County district.

“You can’t run as a Tea Party fiscal conservative and not be able to answer that question better than the Republican candidate in this race just did,” Lentz said after Meehan, asked to propose specific program cuts to shrink the deficit, offered mostly vague prescriptions. Lentz, for his part, said he would cut from defense. “An expensive defense is not necessarily a strong defense,” said the former Army Ranger.

Meehan, a former U.S. Attorney, sought to paint Lentz as a typical tax-and-spend liberal, criticizing the two-term state lawmaker for budget votes he’s taken in the Capitol.

“He hasn’t changed things in Harrisburg,” Meehan said, “why would you think he’s going to change things in Washington?”

Tuesday’s debate at the B’nai Aaron Jewish Community Center here was the third between the two candidates in Pennsylvania’s most competitive and most contentious House race, but just the first debate in front of an audience. During two debates last month on TV and radio shows, the same disagreements emerged on economic policy that mirror much of the political debate leading up to the midterm elections. But in studio, things stayed mostly placid, a dynamic that changed when the two shared a stage.

Lentz, naturally more fluid off the cuff than his opponent, challenged Meehan on his allegiance to Tea Party ideals, at times claiming—incorrectly—that Meehan favors privatizing Social Security and Medicare. At one point, Lentz noted that a local Tea Party group has endorsed only two candidates “within 15 miles of this podium”—Meehan and newly-nominated Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell.

Jim Schneller, the independent candidate running in the district, was not included in the debate, but courted voters outside.

“It’s disappointing, but not surprising,” Schneller said of his exclusion.

Inside, Lentz and Meehan jousted over tax cuts, deficits, stimulus spending and how best to create jobs. Lentz challenged Meehan to support small business lending legislation that recently passed the Senate, and Meehan pressed Lentz to defend votes to increase state education funding. The volleys came as Lentz’s campaign has stepped up efforts to undermine Meehan’s reputation as a moderate by tying him to the Tea Party movement, just as Democrats across the country are doing. Meanwhile, Meehan, enjoying more name recognition than his opponent from years as a local District Attorney, is looking to define Lentz before the Democrat can use a TV advertising campaign to define himself.

Lentz has already begun airing TV ads, as has the national Republican Party. Meehan, sporting a financial advantage, has yet to hit the airwaves in the suburban, Philadelphia district.

“What we need to do is create the kind of economic certainty that will allow private dollars to invest in job growth,” said Meehan, who voiced support for rolling back unspent money from the economic stimulus package and TARP bailout, as well as repealing the newly enacted health care law.

Lentz said he would have sought a greater focus on infrastructure spending if he had been in Congress when the stimulus was crafted. But saying he would have supported it nonetheless, he said Meehan’s opposition to the measure would have meant less state aid for school districts in the area.

“He’d have voted against aid to school districts he was charged with representing,” Lentz said. “When I look at something like the stimulus, I look over my shoulder. How’s it going to affect the people I represent?”

Meehan countered that some local school districts are sitting on cash surpluses.

One of the most animated exchanges came when Meehan accused of Lentz of irresponsibly supporting a state education funding increase of almost $500 million in the recently passed budget. Lentz noted that the money helped avert school property tax increases locally, and twice challenged Meehan to say whether or not he would have supported the same education funding increase if he were a state lawmaker. Meehan didn’t answer explicitly, saying only that he would have “supported a budget that held the line on spending.”

The early exchanges on the subject of Israel were more tame, with both candidates agreeing that the country should not be forced to accept preconditions before coming to the negotiating table to work toward a peace agreement. Meehan said he worries that the relative political impotence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “sets us up to fail,” and that preconditions create “an environment in which we may be destined to fail.” Both candidates agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, and that harsher, more targeted sanctions must be explored.

“The greatest concern I have is [Iran's] capacity to be able to act as an agent of terror,” Meehan said. “If the sanctions won’t work, we’ve got to be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel.”

Lentz said aid from the United States is critical for Israel.

“Foreign aid is a good thing,” he said, “and for Israel it’s an essential thing.”

See video clips from the debate below.

September 22, 2010 at 6:00 am

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Bryan Lentz, Jim Schneller, PA-7, Pat Meehan

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