The two candidates in a tight contest for Congress have squared off in their only televised debate of the campaign.
U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-East Moline) and Republican Bobby Schilling, a former congressman, met in Moline at WQAD-TV. The two sides took each other to task on promises, and their campaign ads. Schilling says he’s the one telling the truth in his ads.
“Our ads are all factual, and they’re based on facts,” Schilling said. “Hers are more of the ‘straw man,’ where you can pick whoever you want throughout the United States and say, ‘X candidate decided he’s going to ship jobs overseas,’ which is truly false. And PolitiFact backs that up for us.”
Bustos cites a FactCheck.org report stating Schilling’s ads are not honest.
“They check the truthfulness of ads all over the country,” Bustos said. “They have called my opponent’s ads against me shamefully misleading. They have nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican, but they do have to do with fair messaging to voters.”
In order to avoid negative ads, Bustos says her husband — Rock Island County interim Sheriff Gerry Bustos — looks for channels where he can watch Gilligan’s Island or F-Troop instead.
On the issue of the U.S. response to Ebola, Bustos says people are worried about Ebola hitting U.S. soil, and rightfully so, suggesting that maybe limiting flights to and from Africa would help. Schilling agrees that the threat is serious.