Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) lashed out at a Republican Senate candidate in Iowa Tuesday for using the term AWOL to attack one of his opponents in the Iowa Republican Senate primary.
McCain is criticizing candidate Mark Jacobs for using the term on a website his campaign created to attack Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst over her missing votes from the Iowa legislature. Ernst partially missed the votes because of her National Guard duty and partially to campaign, according to the Des Moines Register.
“It was bad enough that Mark Jacobs called Joni Ernst ‘AWOL’ while she was on duty serving in the Iowa National Guard, but the fact that he has refused to remove this offensive term from his website is inexcusable,” McCain said in a statement on Tuesday, according to the Register.
In April, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reviewed Ernst’s missed votes and reported that most of them did not directly coincide with her National Guard commitments.
Ernst has also made national headlines recently for her campaign ads. One featured her shooting a gun and vowing to “unload” on Obamacare. Another focused on her experience castrating pigs which, Ernst argued, is how she would handle pork barrel spending if sent to Washington.
