Russ Bogh owes his opponent in the state Senate race an apology for making a baseless accusation.

Bogh accused his opponent, Assemblyman John Benoit, of filing "shady campaign reports" that have "hidden over $80,000" and failing to comply with state law. Those are serious allegations. There was only one problem: They weren't true.

Benoit had filed the appropriate reports and disclosed the expenditures. Bogh had looked at the wrong forms. Talk about shooting from the hip. That's a pretty big mistake. Bogh should acknowledge it and apologize.

Bogh refuses to admit he was wrong, which is not a quality we like to see in our leaders. He dances around this and now prefers to make new accusations surrounding Benoit's credit-card expenditures that were individually below $100, but collectively total more than $67,000 over five years. Bogh also used credit cards for items below $100, but said his expenditures only totaled about $14,000. Here, too, Benoit has not done anything illegal and has not hidden anything.

"It was confusing," Bogh later said of Benoit's campaign filings. "It's not wrong to ask someone to explain."

But Bogh didn't ask his opponent for an explanation, he accused Benoit of hiding information.

We have not endorsed any candidate in the republican primary for Jim Battin's 37th Senate District seat. We look forward to hearing Bogh and Benoit talk more about the issues and their records in the Legislature.

Campaigns will be campaigns and a certain amount of mudslinging is unfortunately the norm in races for political office, but when one side is outright making false allegations and is called on it, that candidate should be willing to admit he or she was wrong and apologize.

Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen any time soon. Bogh said he doesn't feel he did anything wrong, and both Bogh and Benoit are currently digging up what they can find to discredit each other.

It is not our intention to show support for any one candidate at this point, but we felt compelled to call Bogh on this issue, insist on fair campaigns that stick to the issues and expect candidates to apologize when mistaken.