Boustany, Mount Go on Offensive in Ads {LA House Dist. 7}

Baton Rouge, LA, Morning Advocate ^ | 11-26-04 | Courreges, Patrick

[Theodore R.]

Boustany, Mount go on offensive in ads

By PATRICK COURREGES pcourreges@theadvocate.com Acadiana bureau

The candidate-funded television ads running for the edification of potential voters in Louisiana's 7th Congressional District runoff on Dec. 4 are dedicating an increasing amount of time to blasting the opponent. Lafayette Republican Charles Boustany Jr., a retired heart surgeon, and state Sen. Willie Mount, D-Lake Charles, have been trading increasingly sharp jabs at each other's record over the airwaves.

A current Mount ad says that while Boustany's ads show him working in a hospital wearing doctor's scrubs, "He hasn't practiced medicine in quite a while. He even closed his practice."

The Mount ads claim the images of Boustany in doctor's scrubs are deceiving.

Boustany has said he retired and shut down his practice about a year ago when he realized encroaching arthritis was not going to allow him to continue as a heart surgeon.

The Mount ad says that Boustany receives "hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in lavish disability payments."

Boustany has said that he paid into an expensive disability insurance policy for years, but that the payments are not enough to support his family for the long haul.

He's said he has gotten enough money between the insurance payments and savings to get through the past year, but he will need to keep working.

Boustany said in an interview this week that his having been attacked for having to leave his medical career shows desperation on the part of Mount's campaign.

Mount did not return calls for comment on the ad.

Boustany said the disability insurance money he's getting is the result of planning on his part, and that he was originally spurred to get it after he heard about other surgeons forced to leave the field because of physical disability.

Boustany said he's never hidden the fact that he can no longer practice as a heart surgeon.

Boustany has gone on the attack also, going after Mount's stated position as a pro-life candidate on the abortion issue.

A Boustany ad claims Mount "failed to protect life" in a 2001 state Senate vote, saying she "voted against tougher state regulations for clinics prescribing the morning-after abortion pill."

The vote the ad refers to is 2001's House Bill 949, which set up guidelines for regulating abortion clinics operating in the state.

In one Senate amendment to the bill, the language defining abortion was changed from "any procedure" done to terminate an active pregnancy to "any surgical procedure" to do so.

Mount's campaign has held that the law had nothing to do with the "morning-after pill," and because the state cannot outlaw abortion, she joined with other legislators in holding abortion clinics to the same standards as other medical facilities.