U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot's vote this week against an $18 billion appropriations bill that included $6 million for Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center has become an issue in his re-election campaign.

        The appropriations bill passed the House, 348-69. Mr. Chabot, a Cincinnati Republican, was the only Ohio congressman to vote against it.

John Cranley

Steve Chabot

        Mr. Chabot said that while he supported the museum project commemorating the “underground railroad” that aided escaped slaves crossing the Ohio River to freedom, he considered the $18 billion appropriations bill “full of pork” and could not support it.

        But Friday, his opponent in this year's 1st District congressional race, Democrat John Cranley, called Mr. Chabot's vote “a national embarrassment.”

        It is an example, Mr. Cranley said, of Mr. Chabot “putting his own ideology above the interests of his district.”

        The Cranley campaign launched a leaflet drive aimed at African-American voters, who make up about one-third of the voting age population in the 1st District.

        “He acts like a 2-year-old who can't have everything his own way, so he just says "no' to everything,” Mr. Cranley said. “This time he's gone too far.”

        Mr. Chabot said he is being unfairly targeted for “sticking to principles.”

        “I support the Freedom Center and I support it being funded,” Mr. Chabot said. “But I can't support an $18 billion bill that is going to bust the budget. That's not what people sent me here for.”

        The appropriations bill includes money for the Smithsonian Institution and the National Holocaust Memorial, as well as fighting forest fires out West.

        It was about 25 percent larger than the bill passed by Congress in the last budget round, Mr. Chabot said.

        “We can't keep spending more and more,” he said. “This is how we ended up with a $5 trillion debt.”

        But the Republican leadership in the U.S. backed the appropriations bill, as did Mr. Chabot's Southwestern Ohio GOP colleagues, Rob Portman and John Boehner.

        Mr. Portman's campaign office issued a statement Friday saying that it was unfair that Mr. Chabot was being attacked as an oppo nent of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

        “Steve Chabot has been a clear and consistent supporter,” the statement said.

        Mr. Chabot was a co-sponsor of Mr. Portman's legislation this year authorizing matching federal funding for the center.

        The appropriations bill passed by the House this week included $6 million for construction of the center. Mr. Cranley, a recent graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School, is making his first run for public office.

        Mr. Chabot, a former Cincinnati councilman and county commissioner, first won election in 1994 in the 1st District, which covers most of Cincinnati and most of its western suburbs.

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