The mystery of who was behind a largely bogus attack ad in Alabama’s Republican gubernatorial runoff election has been solved. The answer: the Alabama Education Association, an organization headed by the co-chairman of the state Democratic Party.
But don’t look for the answer in the state Elections Division. You have to go the IRS to track down the shadowy group’s financing.
According to IRS reports, the Conservative Coalition for Alabama formed on June 22 as a 527 political committee.
The Florida Police Benevolent Association takes a half-baked proposal to an illogical conclusion in a new TV ad that invites Floridians to think that Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott wants to shutter state prisons and free hardened criminals.
The ad — “Rick Scott is Florida’s Worst Nightmare” — was released Sept. 27. It is based on Scott’s proposal to cut costs at Florida’s state prisons. On his campaign website, Scott says he can cut $1 billion from the prison budget by reducing labor,
On this week’s Sunday talk shows, we found false claims on the debt, discretionary spending, foreign-funded attack ads and polling data.
Wrong on Debt
On ABC’s "This Week," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made a false claim about the federal debt — a claim that we debunked in January, when Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, made a similar statement. The debt situation has worsened since then, but not enough to make this GOP talking point true.
In Indiana’s Senate race, Democratic Rep. Brad Ellsworth falsely alleged that his Republican opponent Dan Coats was involved in the closing of an automotive plant that left more than 800 people out of work. Ellsworth himself told the Associated Press, "We don’t know Mr. Coats’ direct involvement in the closing of this plant."
Ellsworth charged that Coats played a role in the decision to close the plant in a Sept. 20 speech delivered outside the old GDX Automotive factory gates in Wabash,
In New Mexico’s governor’s race, Republican Susana Martinez accuses Democratic Lt. Gov. Diane Denish of giving a $500 million "special tax deal" to a developer who contributed to her campaign and hired her husband as a lobbyist. But Martinez, a district attorney, uses circumstantial evidence to make her case in an ad that falsely accuses Denish of "hiding a scandal."
The evidence cited by the Martinez campaign fails to prove that Denish misused her office to help the developer get a tax break or that the tax break was connected to her husband’s lobbying job or her campaign contributions.
The talk shows’ factual failures included misinformation from Karl Rove (about write-in ballots in Alaska), from a former president (about college graduation rates and health in the U.S.) and from a current one (of Iran, about several topics).
Rove’s Spelling Lesson
Republican strategist Karl Rove overstated a legal barrier confronting GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in her bid to win reelection as a write-in candidate. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," he said:
Rove: [Murkowski] can’t win.
At Friday’s conservative Values Voter Summit, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke out against "falsehoods and rumors" about the tea party movement. We applaud any call to combat misinformation — but Bachmann would do well to guard against falsehoods and rumors herself. In the same speech, she complained about "Speaker Pelosi, who has been busy sticking the taxpayer for a $100,000 bar tab for alcohol on the military jets that she is flying." That’s a totally off-base assertion that we addressed back in March.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s first ad against Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway attacks him for supporting "a government takeover of health care."
This isn’t the first time we’ve written about Republican ads mischaracterizing the new health care law as a "government takeover," and unfortunately we’re certain it won’t be the last. This is one of the GOP’s top campaign themes.
The ad against Conway, Kentucky’s attorney general, also hits him for not joining other, mostly Republican,
In Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur misrepresents the facts when she accuses her Republican rival, Rich Iott, of running Food Town supermarkets "straight into the ground" after taking over as CEO of the company from his father. Her ad attacks Iott for "closing neighborhood stores and costing 5,000 people their jobs." But Food Town thrived with Rich Iott as CEO, and the job losses occurred three years after the company was sold to a larger chain and Iott was no longer in charge.
In a strained attempt to portray Democratic Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama as a puppet of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the National Republican Congressional Committee makes an interesting claim: "Bobby Bright voted with Nancy Pelosi over 70 percent of the time." That’s entirely true, but context is everything: Bright’s low score ranks him next to last in party loyalty.
The ad, which first aired Sept. 12, is one of several released by the NRCC this week that use Pelosi as a foil.