By ERIK SCHELZIG
Associated Press
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) - Next week's election can't come soon enough for Republican Scott DesJarlais, the freshman Republican congressman whose campaign has been rocked by revelations he dated patients and once urged 1 of them to seek an abortion.
The congressman has been largely absent from the campaign trail over the last three weeks since the first news reports about a recorded phone conversation between DesJarlais and a woman with whom he said he had a brief relationship as his first marriage was nearing its end in 2001.
The DesJarlais campaign staff this week has been publicly disputing unspecified portions of a Chattanooga Times Free Press report that quoted an unidentified woman as saying she had been a patient of the Jasper physician and had a six-month relationship with him before his divorce.
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