Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) voted to send pandemic relief checks to Americans. Nearly $1 million worth of ads from the National Republican Congressional Committee described it as putting money into the pockets of criminals, including the Boston Marathon bomber.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) voted for a sweeping health-care, climate and deficit-cutting law. In September, Scott Baugh, her opponent, began running digital ads saying the congresswoman voted to hire “87,000 new IRS agents to audit middle-income families and small businesses.”
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor, secured the endorsement of Planned Parenthood. Kari Lake, the Republican nominee, and the Yuma County Republican Party spun that into ads dubiously claiming that Hobbs was “endorsed by radical groups that want to defund our police.” Hobbs has said the exact opposite, with calls for “boosting funding for sheriffs and local law enforcement.”
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Campaign ads have always had a loose association with the nuances of governance. But as the midterm elections tighten into dozens of battlegrounds across the country, a number of GOP ads are showing a breathtaking disregard for accuracy and clarity, with Republican candidates and their allies twisting tangential elements into baseless or misleading claims.
Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency erased many of the traditional campaign guardrails in the GOP as Republicans adopted his approach of pushing fact-free arguments.
Ken Frydman, who worked on Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 campaign for New York mayor and now runs his own communications firm, said, “In a post-truth age of Trump, candidates for office may feel more comfortable in exaggerating their records and inaccurately attacking their opponents.” Frydman said he always opposed Trump’s entry into politics “because I knew all about Trump since the 1980s.”
Jason Reifler, a political science professor who taught in Georgia and Illinois before joining the faculty at the University of Exeter in Britain, said Trump introduced a whole new level of lying in politics.
After reviewing several ads at The Washington Post’s request, he said they are “the sort of kernel-of-truth pushing the boundaries of what you can get away with” that both parties have run for decades. The ads “are inaccurate and misleading but they are not anywhere in the same league” as Trump’s lies about a stolen election, former president Barack Obama’s birth certificate, or linking the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to the murder of President John F. Kennedy, he said.
Reifler added: “Thirty-second spots do not really allow for nuanced political discussions and really incentivizes saying things that are as extreme as you can get away with.”
In a statement, Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans “have nothing to run on but lies and disinformation” to avoid talking about their plans to restrict abortion rights and address the economy.
Republicans stood by their ads.
“Yes, the ads are 100 percent and indisputably accurate,” said Calvin Moore, communications director for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC whose ads also call Planned Parenthood one of the “radical” groups looking to defund the police and label any amount of money reallocated from any law enforcement program as part of the “defund” effort.
The National Republican Congressional Committee’s attack ad on Spanberger in Virginia says she voted to send “nearly $1 billion in stimulus checks to prisoners, including domestic terrorists.” When the narrator says this last part, the ad shows an image of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
What the ad does not show is the two previous rounds of stimulus funding that Republicans supported, which also allow money to be sent to incarcerated people, according to FactCheck.org. One of the Republicans who supported those earlier, similarly designed rounds of stimulus funding is Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), head of the NRCC.
And any check to Tsarnaev would have been seized to partly satisfy court-mandated payments to victims.
A spokesman for the NRCC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The IRS ads directed at Porter appeared not only in California, but also targeted Democrats in Florida, Texas and New York.
Brandon Williams, the Republican nominee in Upstate New York’s 22nd Congressional District, began running television ads, with the NRCC, warning about “Biden’s plan to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to target the middle-class.”
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) was hit with a similar ad, from the Congressional Leadership Fund.
The ads refer to money in the Inflation Reduction Act that may pay for as many as 86,852 new IRS employees by the year 2031.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in an Aug. 10 letter to Commissioner Charles P. Rettig of the IRS that “small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.”
Instead, Yellen wrote, “enforcement resources will focus on high-end noncompliance.”
The Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote earlier that the 87,000 figure “is wildly exaggerated. These people are not all new tax agents.” And a bureau official said about 50,000 employees — more than half of its staff — are eligible to retire within five years.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) voted for a sweeping health-care, climate and deficit-cutting law. In September, Scott Baugh, her opponent, began running digital ads saying the congresswoman voted to hire “87,000 new IRS agents to audit middle-income families and small businesses.”
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor, secured the endorsement of Planned Parenthood. Kari Lake, the Republican nominee, and the Yuma County Republican Party spun that into ads dubiously claiming that Hobbs was “endorsed by radical groups that want to defund our police.” Hobbs has said the exact opposite, with calls for “boosting funding for sheriffs and local law enforcement.”
ADVERTISING
Campaign ads have always had a loose association with the nuances of governance. But as the midterm elections tighten into dozens of battlegrounds across the country, a number of GOP ads are showing a breathtaking disregard for accuracy and clarity, with Republican candidates and their allies twisting tangential elements into baseless or misleading claims.
Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency erased many of the traditional campaign guardrails in the GOP as Republicans adopted his approach of pushing fact-free arguments.
Ken Frydman, who worked on Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 campaign for New York mayor and now runs his own communications firm, said, “In a post-truth age of Trump, candidates for office may feel more comfortable in exaggerating their records and inaccurately attacking their opponents.” Frydman said he always opposed Trump’s entry into politics “because I knew all about Trump since the 1980s.”
Jason Reifler, a political science professor who taught in Georgia and Illinois before joining the faculty at the University of Exeter in Britain, said Trump introduced a whole new level of lying in politics.
After reviewing several ads at The Washington Post’s request, he said they are “the sort of kernel-of-truth pushing the boundaries of what you can get away with” that both parties have run for decades. The ads “are inaccurate and misleading but they are not anywhere in the same league” as Trump’s lies about a stolen election, former president Barack Obama’s birth certificate, or linking the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to the murder of President John F. Kennedy, he said.
Reifler added: “Thirty-second spots do not really allow for nuanced political discussions and really incentivizes saying things that are as extreme as you can get away with.”
In a statement, Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans “have nothing to run on but lies and disinformation” to avoid talking about their plans to restrict abortion rights and address the economy.
Republicans stood by their ads.
“Yes, the ads are 100 percent and indisputably accurate,” said Calvin Moore, communications director for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC whose ads also call Planned Parenthood one of the “radical” groups looking to defund the police and label any amount of money reallocated from any law enforcement program as part of the “defund” effort.
The National Republican Congressional Committee’s attack ad on Spanberger in Virginia says she voted to send “nearly $1 billion in stimulus checks to prisoners, including domestic terrorists.” When the narrator says this last part, the ad shows an image of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
What the ad does not show is the two previous rounds of stimulus funding that Republicans supported, which also allow money to be sent to incarcerated people, according to FactCheck.org. One of the Republicans who supported those earlier, similarly designed rounds of stimulus funding is Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), head of the NRCC.
And any check to Tsarnaev would have been seized to partly satisfy court-mandated payments to victims.
A spokesman for the NRCC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The IRS ads directed at Porter appeared not only in California, but also targeted Democrats in Florida, Texas and New York.
Brandon Williams, the Republican nominee in Upstate New York’s 22nd Congressional District, began running television ads, with the NRCC, warning about “Biden’s plan to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to target the middle-class.”
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) was hit with a similar ad, from the Congressional Leadership Fund.
The ads refer to money in the Inflation Reduction Act that may pay for as many as 86,852 new IRS employees by the year 2031.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in an Aug. 10 letter to Commissioner Charles P. Rettig of the IRS that “small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.”
Instead, Yellen wrote, “enforcement resources will focus on high-end noncompliance.”
The Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote earlier that the 87,000 figure “is wildly exaggerated. These people are not all new tax agents.” And a bureau official said about 50,000 employees — more than half of its staff — are eligible to retire within five years.