Monday, Aug. 22, 2016 | 2 a.m.
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Political ads offer a terrific demonstration of persuasion tactics. And they can be quite sneaky and disingenuous if not downright dishonest.
Newspapers try their best to stay on top of fact-checking the latest campaign propaganda, and there are independent organizations dedicated to assessing the accuracy of content in commercials, speeches and other material.
One of them, PolitiFact, won a Pulitzer Prize for its terrific work during the 2008 election season in calling out candidates for lies and misstatements. After all, what good are the media if they allow falsehoods and half-truths to go unchecked?
Donald Trump has become notorious for the lies he has uttered in this campaign season — proven, documented lies that must make his handlers squirm.
But this is about the National Republican Senatorial Committee and its TV commercial in support of U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, who is running for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Harry Reid.
This particular commercial might seem damning for the conclusions it tries to draw about the qualifications of Heck’s Democratic opponent, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. But it’s playing voters for suckers.
“In Catherine Cortez Masto’s last term as attorney general, Nevada murder went up 11 percent, robbery went up 28 percent, rape 51 percent,” the ad says. “When Cortez Masto left office, Nevada ranked as America’s third-most dangerous state.”
PolitiFact took a look at this commercial and observed: “The numbers are technically accurate, but the ad fails to prove what Cortez Masto had to do with them.”
Yes, Cortez Masto was Nevada’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015. But while state officials — including lawmakers — can help establish a state’s policy toward criminals, the actual incidence of crime is a factor of effective policing in individual neighborhoods and area commands.
Presumably, the National Republican Senatorial Committee knew this when it ordered the commercial. It knew it was trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes. It knew it was being deceitful and conniving.
But there’s more that is wrong with that particular commercial: It claimed Nevada is the third-most dangerous state. Here’s what PolitiFact said:
“The NRSC cites a list published in January 2015 from 24/7 Wall Street, a website that covers financial news. The list indeed ranks Nevada third, but the data relies on both crime data and socioeconomic factors, such as the poverty rate and the percentage of adults with a high school diploma.
“No attorneys general, in Nevada or elsewhere, play much of a role in setting educational policy or promoting programs to get people out of poverty.”
And it’s worth examining the hard statistics cited in the TV spot. Crime rates are volatile and can spike up or down any given year. In fact, the commercial conveniently, for its purposes, looked only at the second half of Cortez Masto’s time as attorney general. Looking at her entire eight-year term, total crimes in Nevada decreased from nearly 116,814 in her first year to 92,376 in her last year.
And consider this: That dip in overall crime during her time in office occurred as Nevada’s population increased by about 300,000 residents.
The ad claims that Cortez Masto “couldn’t keep us safe.” But the NRSC offers no proven link connecting her actions as attorney general to swings in murder, robbery and rape.
Indeed, the Republican mad men behind the commercial might as well have tried to blame Cortez Masto for ISIS and the tainted water at the Summer Olympics.
