National news
Electoral bids grow hot around nation
Former South Carolina Gov. David Beasley and three-term Rep. Jim DeMint advanced Tuesday to a runoff for the GOP nomination to seek an open Senate seat in what is sure to be one of the fall’s most closely watched races.
With nearly all the votes in, Beasley had 37 percent, or 107,310 votes, while DeMint had 26 percent, or 77,315 votes in the race for the seat left open by the retirement of Democratic Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings. Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum won the Democratic primary.
The race is for one of five Democrat-held Senate seats in the South to come open this year, all to be hotly contested with the GOP narrowly controlling the Senate by 51-48.
In early returns in Montana’s primaries for an open governor’s seat, Secretary of State Bob Brown led self-declared conservative Pat Davison in the race for the GOP nomination. Republican Gov. Judy Martz chose not to seek re-election.
In Virginia, seven-term Democratic Rep. Jim Moran defeated a primary challenge that was driven largely by his statements about Jewish leaders’ support for the Iraq war that many saw as anti-Semitic. He won with 59 percent of the vote.
In all, seven states held primaries Tuesday, including Iowa, Maine, New Jersey and North Dakota. Most saw noncompetitive primaries, with scant or no challenges for each parties’ candidates for Congress or governor, and the real contest waiting until the fall general election.
Diet supplement law prompts new scrutiny
Washington A decade-old federal law on dietary supplement safety and the FDA’s enforcement are not up to the job of protecting Americans’ health, two senators told an FDA official Tuesday.
Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, ranking Democrat on the Governmental Affairs Committee’s oversight subcommittee, criticized the law as a failure. Subcommittee Chairman George Voinovich of Ohio, singling out one aspect, said it was unacceptable that the Food and Drug Administration has not set regulations for good manufacturing processes in the 10 years since the law was passed.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act requires the FDA to prove that a dietary supplement is harmful rather than having the manufacturer prove it is safe as is required with drugs. The law also does not require supplement manufacturers to report adverse reactions, as drug companies must do.
“If the object of this law is to protect American consumers, it fails,” Durbin told the director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Robert Brackett, who is responsible for enforcing the law. “How can you meet that responsibility when the law is so weak?”
Durbin, who requested the subcommittee hearing, is sponsoring a bill that would make manufacturers report serious adverse reactions such as hospitalizations, permanent injuries or deaths involving users of supplements. self end