The latest ad from New York State Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, a Republican, says that the Albany Times-Union and FactCheck.org have called Democratic challenger Scott Murphy’s advertising "unfair" and "false," respectively. The two men are vying for an open House seat representing New York’s 20th congressional district. The ad doesn’t specify which "attack" the Times-Union was calling "unfair," or which claim from Murphy’s advertising we called "false." Here are the details:
It’s true that we and the Times-Union called out the Murphy campaign for claiming that Tedisco wouldn’t say whether he supports caps on salaries for executives of companies receiving bailout money (he has said he supports the idea). However, we didn’t go that far on another claim from Murphy and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that Tedisco wouldn’t say whether he supports the stimulus.
We said it was "unclear" if Tedisco would have voted yes or no on the stimulus package President Obama signed into law. A campaign spokesperson had said that Tedisco would "support a stimulus that had his amendments to cut the pork and waste and where the money would go in a straight line to help the middle class." But without those amendments? Tedisco hadn’t said. (He now says he would have voted no.)
We should also point out that the Tedisco ad doesn’t mention the fact that, in our story, we also called out the Tedisco campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee for their own misleading claims in ads attacking Murphy.