It was standing room only at the Lower Bucks Campus of Bucks County Community College in Bristol Township on Wednesday for the Democratic Congressional Debate between Shaughnessy Naughton and Kevin Strouse. The two are fighting to take on incumbent Republican Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick to represent the Pennsylvania’s 8th District.
There wasn’t much that separated the candidates during the debate, however, one exchange between the two on the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history provided a glimpse into a definitive difference between the two.
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The disagreement was on whether or not the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented.
“It didn’t happen because we didn’t have the information” Naughton said, which visibly angered Strouse who is a former Army Ranger and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency,” Naughton said while responding to a question with regards to “over reach” by the National Security Agency and its expansion after the attacks. “It happened because we weren’t looking through the information and finding the facts.
Strouse, a former Army Ranger and CIA analyst, didn’t agree with Naugton’s statement saying during the intense but brief exchange.
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“I just think it’s an overstatement to say that Americans weren’t doing their jobs and that’s why 9/11 happened,” he said. He further added criticisms of the intelligence community such as Naughton’s as “typical Congress.”
“Whenever something goes wrong, they tend to blame the intelligence community for policy failures,” Strouse said.
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Naughton and Strouse agreed on the need for more oversight of intelligence programs, but how that can be done wasn’t discussed by the candidates.
The 9/11 Commission report, released in 2004, pointed to security lapses and a failure of communication among intelligence officials in the intelligence community.
In response to other questions covering a range of topics, of note were comments made by both candidates pertaining to potentially voting for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to be the parties minority leader if Democrats fail to take over majority in the House.
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Naughton said she would consider the option but was unsure of what the former speaker of the house intentions are heading into the fall, also noting Pelosi has been an “effective leader.”
Strouse, who Pelosi has campaigned for when she came to Philadelphia during the winter, was non-committal on his stance, which points to fears his campaign has had about being tied to Pelosi.
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“I’m not looking past November,” he said, adding, “I’ll make decisions guided by what I think is best for this community.”
The nine question debate that went on for a little more than 75 minutes also focused on the candidates ideas on how to stop the current gridlock in Congress. The candidates said they would bring the change to fruition by forming partnerships or collaborations with Republicans.
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Education and rebuilding infrastructure were are also ideas talked about by both candidates as ways of getting the economy started and investing in the future.
Naughton said we need to look at short terms and long term investments at the same time as opposed to what Congress is doing currently.
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The debate was moderated by Bristol Borough resident, teacher and author Bill Pezza.
