After two false ads, Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida finally gets it right.
Grayson, whom we criticized for twisting the words of his opponent in a TV ad called "Taliban Dan," released a new ad Oct. 6 called "The Facts" and invited the media to review it. We did. This time he mostly sticks to the facts and doesn’t resort to doctored evidence.
The narrator — a woman — lays out what she says are facts about Republican candidate Daniel Webster’s record regarding women.
In Connecticut’s Senate race, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is sponsoring a misleading ad that attacks Republican candidate Linda McMahon.
It says McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, "laid off workers, yet took millions in bonuses," and "spent thousands on lobbyists to get millions in tax breaks for herself." McMahon did earn "millions in bonuses." She got a total of $2.4 million spread over several years. But in only one of those years were any workers laid off.
A secretive, Republican-leaning group has spent an estimated $3 million on a TV ad making the false claim that government spending is "not creating jobs."
The ad first appeared Sept. 7 and was still running nearly a month later. The ad shows a man in a business suit digging an ever-deeper hole — a visual metaphor for the nation’s ever-expanding debt. It could also be a metaphor for Public Notice, the sponsor of the ad and yet another group whose finances are also something of a black hole.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and the Tea Party Express are at it again.
Murkowski, who is running for reelection as a write-in candidate after losing the GOP nomination to a tea party-backed candidate, has asked Alaska TV stations not to air a Tea Party Express ad that she calls "false, misleading and deceptive." We largely agree with that description.
The ad falsely accuses Murkowski of trying to "influence the absentee vote count" after narrowly losing the primary.
Sunday morning’s talkathons featured a few misstatements in a debate between Kentucky’s Senate contenders, and some confusion about debts and deficits.
Kentucky Senate Candidates Debate
"Fox News Sunday" hosted a debate between Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, a Republican, and his Democratic opponent, Jack Conway.
Paul’s statements about the economic and citizenship status of the country’s uninsured population were false:
Paul: Well, there are two aspects to health care problems. One’s the expense and one’s access.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin is under fire from his Republican opponent, John Raese, for supposedly undermining the coal industry. Raese’s ad is misleading, though. Even the coal producers disagree with it.
The two are competing to fill the last two years of the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd’s term.
Raese says that Manchin "passed a law that eliminates 25 percent of coal usage in our power plants." But that’s not true. The Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Act,
In Florida’s gubernatorial race, Republican candidate Rick Scott claims his Democratic opponent, Alex Sink — the state’s chief financial officer — “funneled” $770,000 in "no-bid contracts" to her former employer, Bank of America. That’s not true. Sink was not the principle decision-maker, and there was plenty of open competition for the business in question.
The ad also claims she had a conflict of interest, though there’s no evidence of that.
The ad, which first aired Sept.
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.