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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Let’s Get to Work – On the Facts

Let’s Get to Work, a political committee largely financed by Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s wife, is at it again — falsely claiming that Attorney General Bill McCollum used a “chartered airplane” to commute to work and charged taxpayers $280,000. McCollum has access to a state plane, but it’s not true that he uses it to commute. And the amount of money he spent on air travel — all of it involving state business — is exaggerated.

McCollum’s Misleading Accusations

There’s more misinformation in the ugly Florida governor’s race, this time from Attorney General Bill McCollum. He claims his GOP primary opponent Rick Scott "personally" got millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds.

The ad, titled “Inner Tube,” says: “Scott tried to hide the fact that he personally bagged millions from the Obama stimulus.” That refers to $63 million in stimulus funding that went to a company named XFone, to expand broadband service to rural areas.

Jerry Brown, Abortion Providers and Afghanistan Withdrawal

In Episode 19 of FactCheck Radio, we look at a false ad from California GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman about her Democratic opponent Jerry Brown’s supposed "legacy of failure." We also examine whether Bill McCollum has really supported abortion providers, as his opponent charges in the Republican primary for the Florida governor’s contest. And we go back to what Obama really did say about the plans for U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July 2011.

For more on the stories discussed in this episode,

Fact-Checking Rick Scott on Abortion

In Florida’s Republican primary for governor, a federal political committee founded by candidate Rick Scott and largely financed by his wife falsely accuses Attorney General Bill McCollum of supporting "abortion providers." The group’s new ad masquerades as a “fact check,” but it mangles facts by characterizing ordinary hospitals (such as the ones Rick Scott himself once ran) as "abortion providers."

The ad, by a group called Let’s Get to Work, first aired June 25. It begins: “Congressman McCollum’s on TV.