An indignant U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, [red]D-Ind.[/red], stormed out of a debate Wednesday after refusing to stay on the same stage with her Republican challenger, Brose McVey.

"People's jaws . . . hit the floor," moderator Robert Helms said, when Carson abruptly left the Meridian Hills Kiwanis Club debate amid gasps and scattered applause.

Carson accused McVey of waging the most negative campaign she's faced. McVey later fired back that Carson's diatribe was a "staged act of righteous indignation not warranted by reality."

The dust-up punctuated what has been one of Carson's toughest re-election battles. She's seeking her fourth term in Congress, and polls have shown the race is close.

Wednesday's event was to have been the second of only two debates featuring Carson, McVey and Libertarian Andrew Horning.

But any chance of the forum being remembered for contrasting views on Iraq or prescription drug coverage ended the moment Carson began to speak.

"If I seem rather upset, you are looking at somebody who is extremely hurt by this campaign," she said. "I don't think I have ever in my life seen the political decay, the lowest common denominator that has been applied by my Republican opponent in this particular race. I don't feel comfortable being in the same room with him."

Carson told the audience she's the victim of a "whispering campaign" that she is anti-Semitic -- a charge McVey said he knew nothing about. And she accused him of "racial polarization, jamming my pictures in his TV ads in a very negative way."

McVey later said it was Carson who was "playing the race card" with such comments and said his campaign has sought to be inclusive and diverse.

Carson also is angry about ads against her being run by the National Republican Congressional Committee, which accuses her of not paying her property taxes on time.

In discussing the tax issue, she cited the trauma of her mother's battle with cancer and eventual death as one reason that her attention was "focused on family matters and not outside extraneous matters."

Carson's mother died in 1987. The Marion County treasurer's office shows Carson repeatedly paid her taxes late from at least 1997 through 2001 on three pieces of property she has owned. She now is current on all her tax bills.

McVey said he has no control over what the national committee says but takes responsibility for any ad on his behalf and stands by its substance.

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Am I considered a Republican when I post on this board?

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Am I considered a Republican when I post on this board?

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Am I considered a Republican when I post on this board?

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Never considered myself one

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Am I considered a Republican when I post on this board?

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Just look at the Dem's ads ala the catoon of Bush pushing the old lady off the cliff.

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"Every man that denied Union prisoners even the worm-eaten crust of famine, and when some poor emaciated Union patriot, driven to insanity by famine, saw in an insane dream the face of his mother, and she beckoned him and he followed, hoping to press her lips once again against his fevered face, and when he stepped one step beyond the dead line the wretch that put the bullet through his loving, throbbing heart was and is a [b][i][u]Democrat[/u][/i][/b]."