Jim Watson was immediately skeptical of American Commitment’s attack ad, which he saw on Facebook.
The ad’s narrator claimed Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, voted to increase electricity costs while displaying the text, “Ohio: Electric Bills Will Skyrocket.”
“Like all political ads, the extreme language (skyrocket) and the improbable idea that anyone would actually vote for electric rates to go up, was too much to resist,” Watson wrote to us in an email. “I knew it was an attack ad, and I wanted to see if it had a grain of truth to it.”
Watson, 43, of Hamilton, Ohio, sent the ad to Spin Detectors. We found that the skyrocket claim goes too far.
Watson said he’s a theater technician, show designer, occasional performer and “the father of two amazing daughters.”
“Politically, I am a liberal,” he said. “But I don’t shy away from calling out members of my own party when they overreach or are flat out wrong.”
— Ben Finley
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