Josh Mandel questions Sherrod Brown's positions, but only addresses some of his own

Brown, a senator since 2007, has had to walk a fine line as an industrial-state Democrat. He supports the goal of cleaner air but sometimes questions the speed at which it can be had and demands more federal help for Ohio to ease the transition from so-called dirty to green energy. His spokeswoman, Meghan Dubyak, said he rejects "the false choice between having clean air to breathe and a job to support a family."

"He has led the fight to ensure that efforts to reduce pollution create jobs in the U.S., rather than jeopardize them," she said. "Ohio's children and families deserve protection from mercury, arsenic, and other pollutants. We need to be concerned about jobs lost, and lives lost, too."

She said Brown will be "closely following the implementation of this court-ordered rule that is the outgrowth of legislation signed into law by President Bush more than 20 years ago." If it is unworkable, he'll explore remedies to make it more flexible, she said.

Physician groups meantime praised the EPA rule. The co-director of the Asthma Center Respiratory Institute at the Cleveland Clinic said the critics' economic claims fail to take into account the high cost of power plant and industrial pollution in terms of poor health, missed work and the need for medical care.

Dr. Sumita B. Khatri, a pulmonary and intensive care specialist at the Clinic, said the EPA rule is "extremely good for Ohio, because ultimately our currency is our people." Numerous studies show that in areas with high particulate-matter levels, "there are more admissions for respiratory diseases, there are more asthma symptoms," she said. "So from a medical standpoint, all the medical societies who work with science and look at peer-reviewed articles -- you can't just publish this if it's junk or if it's activist work -- they subscribe to this scientific fact that there's this association."

Mandel's criticism followed an attack last month in which he said Brown sided with "fringe extremists" and "Washington bureaucrats" who were blocking fracking, or fracturing of shale deep in the earth to extract natural gas, in Ohio. Mandel repeated the claim when issuing his statement Thursday on the EPA mercury rule.

Mandel's fracking comments came after Brown told a radio interviewer that he understood the desire of the Athens, Ohio, mayor, area county commissioners and the president of Ohio University to preserve their water supply's safety. He did not say he objected to fracking. The official who got a delay for more study of fracking in the Wayne National Forest was the local forest supervisor, not a Washington bureaucrat, and her decision affected less than 1 percent of Ohio land where fracking could occur.

PolitiFact Ohio, a fact-checking feature of The Plain Dealer, found Mandel's fracking attack ridiculously false and labeled it "Pants on Fire."

Despite these two recent episodes, Mandel has remained silent on other issues. As debate raged late this week, his campaign would not say whether he supported extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits that had Congress tied in knots. Brown as well as Portman supported a short-term extension to buy more time for a longer-lasting plan, while many House conservatives balked. The two sides reached an agreement late Thursday.