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Posted: June 29, 2007 4:03 PM
Hunter, Already Faltering in Key States, Now Subject of Congressional Inquiry
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Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a long-shot presidential candidate, came under scrutiny earlier this month as part of a Congressional inquiry into overspending on a failed aircraft project.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Hunter channeled $63 million in Congressional funding to DuPont Aerospace, an engineering firm in La Jolla, CA, to build the DP-2 Vectored Thrust Aircraft, ignoring repeated Pentagon reports of the plane’s unsafe framework.

In the plane’s 20-year development, it has neither flown nor received a positive review from the Pentagon, the Union Tribune reported. Hunter, the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also received $36,000 in campaign contributions from DuPont, but said the donations were not correlated to the Congressional earmarks.

On Friday, Hunter praised the Senate’s decision to shoot down the proposed immigration reform bill. In a statement released on his Web site, he wrote, “While this flawed piece of legislation should never have been considered in the first place, I commend my colleagues in the Senate who positioned themselves with the American people and rejected this amnesty bill.”

On the campaign trail, Hunter, a steadfast proponent of the war on terror, maintained his stance last week when he called for the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center to remain open. According to The New York Time’s blog the Caucus, Hunter warned that if the facility were to close, the detainees would be mixed in with the rest of America’s criminal population.

Despite his firm pro-war stance, Hunter continues to trail fellow Republicans in key primary state polls. In a recent CNN poll judging New Hampshire opinion, Hunter garnered zero percent as the poll noted no participant chose to support the candidate.

Hunter isn’t faring much better in Iowa, where Strategic Vision tracked Hunter at only one percent of the vote.