On Monday, FactCheck.org hosted a post-election conference on political advertising in the 2010 election by outside groups. Our liberal and conservative panelists played some TV ads to illustrate their points – and we couldn’t resist pointing out that we had found a few of them to be misleading. Here’s what we said about some of those ads:
- "Crumble,” by California Working Families for Jerry Brown. The ad, funded by a coalition of labor unions, criticizes Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s years as CEO of eBay. We found it to be misleading.
- “Nancy,” by the Service Employees International Union. The ad, which ran during the final days of the Senate Democratic primary in Arkansas, attacked Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln for one of her votes on the Democratic health care bill – even though Lincoln supported the bill and helped it become law.
- "Make Murray Worry,” by the American Action Network. This ad, aired by a right-of-center, pro-business group, attacked Democratic Sen. Patty Murray for her votes on bills affecting small business, children and families.
- "Mark Kirk, Connect the Dots," by MoveOn.org. This ad claimed without proof that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was receiving contributions from foreign corporations to fund campaign ads in support of Republicans, such as Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk.
For the record, Murray and Kirk won, and Whitman lost in November. Lincoln won her primary election, but lost the general election.