Iraq emerges as early issue in Democratic Senate primary

As expected, the Iraq war has emerged as a sticky issue in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary.

Incumbent Frank Lautenberg’s campaign today issued a press release citing a Philadelphia Inquirer story that ran today, saying that challenger Rep. Rob Andrews, an early Democratic supporter of the war, misrepresented exactly when he turned into an opponent of the effort.

Andrews told the Inquirer that he first spoke out against the war in the summer of 2004 at a speech at the Gloucester Chamber of Commerce.

But Lautenberg’s campaign dug up a November, 2005 interview with Gannett in which Andrews – then a hopeful to be appointed to the Senate seat that ultimately went to Bob Menendez -- appeared to still stand behind the invasion, saying “"[The Iraq War] removed a risk the country could not afford to bear. The fact of the matter is Saddam had the capability to produce biological and chemical weapons. Waiting would not have worked."

The press release was entitled “Andrews’ Deception on Iraq Continues.”

Lautenberg had been an opponent of the war, but changed his stance to support it during his campaign against Doug Forrester in 2002. Upon returning to the Senate, however, he did become a critic more than two years before Andrews did.

In the earliest stages of Andrews’s current Senate campaign, his supporters circulated a New York Times story about Lautenberg’s campaign trial change of heart on the war.

Andrews’s chief of staff and campaign spokesman, Bill Caruso, could not immediately be reached for comment.