PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — You’d hope what you see on TV is true, but we all know that’s not always the case.
In politics it can be a challenge to separate fact from fiction, and that’s why your local election headquarters will be fact checking political ads over the next month.
What makes this increasingly important is that this is a political season like no other, and Democrats in Congress smell blood in the water, hoping to take over the House and the Senate.
This is really ironic because the first ad 10 On Your Side take a look at has a shark lurking, with words like danger, stealth, radical. The shark is supposed to be the candidate.
The ad starts with scary music, and then the fin appears. It’s slow moving and a deep voice states, “It’s out there. You don’t see it yet, but it’s out there. Danger, lurking in the race for Congress. Stealth candidate Elaine Luria has quietly promised something radical and dangerous. She backs a government takeover of health care that will make your health care costs skyrocket and deteriorate your quality of care. What you don’t know about Elaine Luria should make you nervous.”
10 On Your Side showed Luria the commercial and she laughed.
“You can actually see I am laughing at it,” she said. False implications, says the 2nd Congressional candidate who served in the Navy and is the target of this National Republican Congressional Committee political ad.
“I don’t think my professional career and serving our country for 20 years supports that I am radical or dangerous or extreme in anyway.”
Luria wants you to know she served 20 years in the Navy. She commanded a combat unit with 400 sailors. She retired as a commander.
Luria is running against Republican incumbent Scott Taylor, who launched an ad against Luria.
“Elaine Luria, running a negative campaign against Scott Taylor, who is a Navy Seal Iraq War combat veteran is a disgrace. Worse, liberal Nancy Pelosi is pulling Luria’s strings, bank rolling her attacks. Because Pelosi is desperate to rule as House Speaker, where with Luria’s vote we will have higher taxes, lower wages, and fewer jobs. And if Nancy Pelosi puppet Elaine Luria wins, we lose.”
The implication is Luria is a puppet supporting Democratic Congressional Leader Nancy Pelosi. Luria claims the only time she saw Pelosi was in a crowd of 300.
“To make me look like I’m someone’s puppet, I am not anyone’s puppet, and if his opponent was a man he wouldn’t have had him dancing around like a puppet with strings and a crown on.”
She also took this dig at Taylor, “If you’re voting 98 percent of the time with Trump, it kind of looks like he (Taylor) is the puppet.”
“Congressman Taylor was subpoenaed, but refused to appear,” the commercial against Taylor states, but the statement is not true.
What the Democratic Party ad fails to state is that Taylor was subpoenaed to appear in court, but the judge quashed the subpoena and Scott was not required to appear, while five campaign associates refused to testify, taking the fifth.
Then the ad says, “And Scott Taylor remains at large, remain vigilant Virginia.” Taylor is outraged by the false implications the ad leaves.
“If I was not a public figure they would be sued and paying a ton of money. I am a public figure, so they can say what they want, but it is clearly false.”
10 On Your Side called the Democratic Party about the ad and spoke to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Regional Press Secretary Jacob Peters.
We told him that the ad uses police lingo for “the suspect is still at large,” which makes it sound Taylor has done something wrong.
“It is a creative way of showing the scandal is still ongoing with a lot of unanswered questions,” Peters said.
10 On Your Side asked about the refusing to appear comment in the ad. “Refused, declined, denied whatever synonym you want to choose, he went out of his way to avoid answering questions about what the judge called ‘out and out fraud committed by his campaign’ and that was his choice not to appear.”
Jacob Peters left the impression that the “Remain Vigilant Virginia” commercials against Taylor would continue, and as new information develops in the case, new commercials will air, and that is bad news for Scott Taylor.
He wants to talk about other issues instead of the forgery case involving his staffers.