TRENTON, N.J., Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Tom Kean, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey, has called for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign over a Capitol Hill sex scandal.
Hastert has insisted he will not resign over the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned last week over salacious e-mails he sent to teenage male Congressional pages.
"Hastert should resign as speaker," Kean said in a brief statement Friday. "He is the head of the institution and this happened on his watch. I urge House leaders to go further by appointing an outside panel to review the matter immediately."
Kean, the son of a popular former governor, is one of the few Republicans this year with any chance of knocking off a Democratic senator. But Sen. Robert Menendez, who was named to the seat when Jon Corzine became governor, has a slight edge in a recent poll.
While Kean supports President George W. Bush on taxes and the Iraq war, he has taken stands against the party on occasion, including calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as secretary of defense, The New York Times reported. In Hastert's case, Bush and other Republican leaders have supported the speaker against Democratic charges that he ignored information that Foley was behaving inappropriately with pages.
