"After going on television this week to say the U.S. Senate race needs to focus on issues, Sen. George Allen began a new TV ad yesterday in which a former female midshipman accuses Democratic candidate Jim Webb of a lack of integrity.

Janice Buxbaum, a self-described Democrat and small business owner in Fairfax County, said Webb distorted her views in an article he wrote in 1979 for Washingtonian magazine.

Webb said her allegations are not true.

'The woman isn't even in the article,' he told reporters at a news conference yesterday.

In the article, titled 'Women Can't Fight,' Webb said the presence of women was hurting the military academies and the armed services.

Buxbaum said she was interviewed for the article, under orders from the Naval Academy. She said when he showed her the article, quotes attributed to her were made up.

'I looked at him and said, 'I never said any of those things, they're all lies,'' Buxbaum says in the ad. 'And he said, 'Too bad.''

In a conference call with reporters, set up by the Allen campaign, Buxbaum said Webb replied that she would have said those things, had she thought of them.

She said she had her name removed from the article. Buxbaum acknowledged that she has no proof of the allegations she was making. She did not copy the original version of the article, she said. She described the article as a 'he said, she said' type.

Buxbaum said she had voiced her concerns about Webb when he was nominated to be secretary of the Navy in 1987.

She said she will be supporting Allen only because he is not Webb.

The ad will run for at least a week on broadcast and cable stations in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. It replaces an ad featuring three female midshipmen who said Webb's article resulted in them being hazed at the Naval Academy.

On statewide TV in an unusual two-minute commercial Monday night, Allen called for a discussion of issues.

'This is what we get, four days later,' said Kristian Denny Todd, a spokeswoman for Webb. She called the new ad 'a lie' and said Buxbaum is a sometime Republican." (Tyler Whitley, Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 7, 2006)

Editor's Note: An index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html