In episode 11 of FactCheck Radio, we look at false and misleading ads in two congressional races: a special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th district, and the Democratic Senate primary in Arkansas. Both elections are May 18.
Person: Mark Critz
Critz, Burns Swap False Charges
In the final days of the May 18 special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district, Democrat Mark Critz and Republican Tim Burns have escalated their attacks on each other in TV ads chock full of false and misleading claims. Critz wrongly accuses Burns of wanting to “privatize Medicare and Social Security.” But …
Ethics Attack Misses Mark
Ethics increasingly has become an issue in the final weeks of the hotly contested special election in the 12th congressional district in Pennsylvania. Republican candidate Tim Burns has been running a television ad saying Democrat Mark Critz “was investigated …
Twitter, and the Pennsylvania 12th
In episode 9 of FactCheck Radio, we debunk false tweets from the political parties on Twitter, and we look at dueling ads in a special election to fill a House seat in Pennsylvania.
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For more on the stories discussed in this episode, see:
Mis-Tweets on Twitter April 28
A False Hit on Critz April 22
Another False Tax Attack (And One That’s Just Deceptive) April 21
A False Hit on Critz
We’ve written about misrepresentations in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s attack on Tim Burns, the GOP candidate in the Pennsylvania 12th. Being equal-opportunity fact-checkers, we can’t let a false attack ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee in this race slip by without mention.
The hit on Democratic nominee Mark Critz says that "Congress and liberals like Mark Critz didn’t listen" when "Americans said no to government-run health care." Now, we could go into all the claims the ad makes about the new health care law,
Another False Tax Attack (And One That’s Just Deceptive)
There they go again.
Earlier this month, we called out Democrats for falsely accusing a Republican House candidate in Hawaii of pledging to protect tax breaks for sending jobs overseas. All he did was sign a pledge not to raise taxes. Now a Democratic candidate is making the same false claim against his opponent in another special election in Pennsylvania.
For Democrats, misrepresenting an opponent’s anti-tax position as an anti-jobs position is getting to be a bad habit.