How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
Georgia’s been a key battleground in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate.
And metro Atlantans have had ringside — or should we say couchside — seats for so many campaign ads we’ve lost count.
We fact-checked a number of the claims made by Republican David Perdue, Democrat Michelle Nunn or by groups buying television and radio ads on their behalf.
As we’ve been promising, here are summaries of some of those, as well as links to see more.
Next week, in this space, we’ll revisit Truth-O-Meter checks in the equally tight race for governor between Republican incumbent Nathan Deal and Democrat Jason Carter.
Want to to comment on our rulings or suggest one of your own? Just go to our Facebook page (
). You can also follow us on Twitter (
).
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/
David Perdue
David Perdue in a video Feb. 5: Dollar General “added 2,500 stores and 20,000 jobs” during his four-year tenure as CEO.
David Perdue said Dollar General added 2,500 stores and 20,000 jobs from the time he took over as chief executive officer in 2003 until he left the business in 2007.
The company keeps annual financial statements on its website. While the reports did not exactly match the dates of Perdue’s tenure at Dollar General, the annual reports show his claim has merit.
The annual reports note the company’s ambitious plans to open 600 to 800 stores a year. In most years during Perdue’s tenure, Dollar General exceeded those projections.
On Feb. 28, 2003, Dollar General had 6,192 stores and an estimated 53,500 full-time and part-time employees. On March 4, 2007, the company had 8,260 stores and about 69,500 full-time and part-time employees. That’s a four-year increase of nearly 2,100 stores and 16,000 workers.
Perdue’s numbers are slightly off from what we found, but his overall point about opening many new stores and creating a lot of jobs is on target.
We rate Perdue’s claim Mostly True.
David Perdue television ad “Secure Our Borders,” Sept 17: “Michelle Nunn’s own plan says she funded organizations linked to terrorists.”
A television ad from Republican candidate David Perdue says: “Michelle Nunn’s own plan says she funded organizations linked to terrorists.”
Perdue spokesman Derrick Dickey said the statement was based first on Nunn’s leaked campaign documents and then a National Review story following up on the leak as evidence of the terrorist connection.
The leaked memos included anticipated attacks in the campaign, including “service awards to inmates, terrorists” during Nunn’s tenure as CEO of the Points of Light foundation.
Nunn’s camp correctly predicted the GOP would attack her on the issue.
MissionFish, a business that Points of Light owned until 2012, collected donations from eBay users for about 20,000 charities. One of those charities, Islamic Relief USA, received about $13,500 in donations from MissionFish and has partnered with the umbrella group Islamic Relief Worldwide on disaster relief programs.
A top Israeli defense official has accused IRW of having links to the terrorist group Hamas, and in June, the defense minister banned it from operating in that nation.
The U.S. State Department does not consider the group a terrorist organization or front.
The Perdue ad plainly misconstrues what the Nunn internal memos said.
We rated the Perdue ad claim Pants On Fire.
David Perdue during a U.S. Senate debate Oct. 7: Four million women have fallen into poverty in the past six years.
During a debate in Perry, Republican Senate candidate David Perdue said Democratic opponent Michelle Nunn was trying to “tear down” his business career to detract from her support of President Barack Obama.
“She supports the economic policies of this administration, one that put 4 million women in poverty in six years,” Perdue said.
Perdue spokesman Derrick Dickey said the candidate’s comments relied, in part, on an August post on the Georgia Federation of Republican Women’s website. The post stated that nearly 4 million women had fallen into poverty since Obama was elected in 2008.
Other Republicans have made similar claims this year as both parties vie for the female vote and control of the Senate.
They’re based on U.S. census data showing the number of females living in poverty rose from 22.131 million in 2008 to 25.840 million in 2012, for an increase of 3.7 million.
Two problems: They use data from 2008, a year before Obama took office; and they are counting all females, including children, as women.
Looking at the data from 2009, when Obama’s policies could have an impact, through 2013, the increase in women in poverty drops to 1.5 million. (That’s when you count females 18 and over). That’s too many but a far cry from 4 million.
We rated Perdue’s statement Mostly False.
David Perdue in an ad Sept. 17: Michelle Nunn is “for amnesty.”
The amnesty debate made its way into the U.S. Senate race and into an ad from Republican David Perdue against Democratic rival Michelle Nunn.
“She’s for amnesty, while terrorism experts say our border breakdown could provide an entry for groups like ISIS,” Perdue says in his ad, “Secure Our Borders.”
Perdue spokesman Derrick Dickey said the claim is based on statements that she would have voted for the immigration bill that passed the Senate last year but stalled in the House.
Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida spearheaded that bipartisan bill, which was co-sponsored by Democratic U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and supported by 13 other GOP senators, including former Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
The proposal created a 13-year path to citizenship instead of blanket forgiveness for undocumented immigrants.
There is some truth in calling the Senate bill an amnesty measure because of that long pathway, but just a grain. The bill also calls for much stiffer border control, and investment, first.
Ignoring those mandates pushes the claim down the Truth-O-Meter.
We rated the claim by Perdue as Mostly False.
Michelle Nunn
Michelle Nunn in an ad Aug. 12: In Georgia, Perdue’s company closed plants and moved jobs to China.
Democrat Michelle Nunn took aim at Republican David Perdue in an attack ad, criticizing her opponent’s experience.
“In Georgia, Perdue’s company closed plants and moved jobs to China, ” the ad says.
Given that the winner of the Senate race could help decide which party will control the congressional chamber, PolitiFact Georgia decided to drill down on the claim.
Nunn’s claim is carefully worded to say Perdue’s company, not the candidate himself, was shutting Georgia textile plants at a time when it was adding jobs in Asia.
News reports and company filings back up the claim.
We rated Nunn’s claim True.
Democratic Party of Georgia in a press release July 28: David Perdue made tens of millions of dollars piling a firm with billions in debt.
State Democrats went after Republican Senate hopeful David Perdue’s business record early, leveling a specific charge about his tenure at his biggest success, CEO of Dollar General.
Perdue made tens of millions of dollars piling the firm with billions in debt, the Democratic Party of Georgia claimed in a press release.
To support the notion, party spokesman Michael Smith pointed to SEC filings that show the discount chain’s debt grew by $3.8 billion in Perdue’s four years as company CEO.
The numbers are accurate, but Democrats failed to mention that the debt came from a leveraged buyout, for $7.3 billion by the private equity firm KKR.
As with all leveraged buyouts, it was KKR as the buyer, not Dollar General as the seller, that financed the deal —- and the debt in question.
Perdue acknowledges that KKR paid him $42 million as part of the deal. The money bought out the final two years of his CEO contract so the firm could bring in its own boss to turn the company around.
Still, the claim mischaracterized how leveraged buyouts work — by putting the buyer in debt. It also exaggerates Perdue’s ability to act, since Dollar General’s board of directors had to approve the sale.
We rated the claim Mostly False.
EMILY’s List in a television attack ad Sept. 1: “Federal investigators found a company that (David Perdue) ran discriminated against women, paid them less than men for the same work.”
The attack ad against David Perdue, the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, is based on a pay discrimination lawsuit filed by female managers at Dollar General while Perdue was CEO of the discount retailer.
The 2006 lawsuit, eventually expanded to cover thousands of female store managers, accused the chain of paying male managers more than females performing the same job, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
Perdue, who was Dollar General’s CEO from April 2003 to July 2007, was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Dollar General did not acknowledge any liability or wrongdoing. The lawsuit was settled in 2012 —- after Perdue left the company —- for $18.75 million.
The settlement agreement promised some policy changes, something legal experts say is fairly routine.
The ad focuses on a letter from an area director for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Jackson, Miss., to a complaining female manager.
The February 2008 letter states that “available evidence establishes reasonable cause to believe” that female store managers in the district where the woman worked “were discriminated against” in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, and the Equal Pay Act.
The statement is accurate on its face. But the reader needs to understand that the claims were never proved in court, and a settlement was reached without any admission of wrongdoing.
We rated the ad by EMILY’s List as Mostly True.
Michelle Nunn in a fundraiser invitation Sept. 13: Michelle Nunn “spent most of her childhood” in Perry, Ga.
Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn and her Republican opponent, David Perdue, are trying to burnish their Georgia credentials — no easy task since both have spent major portions of their lives out of state.
The invitation to an event at the Atlanta home of R&B singer Usher invoked a small Middle Georgia town to tell Nunn’s story.
“Daughter of Sam and Colleen Nunn,” the bio section read, “Michelle was born in 1966 in Macon, near her grandparents’ farm in Perry, Ga., where she spent most of her childhood.”
An alert reader pointed out the “most of her childhood” claim, certain Nunn herself had acknowledged her family moved away when her father was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. She was 6 at the time.
The Nunns lived in the capital region during her high school years. She played basketball at the all-girls National Cathedral School.
Nunn did spend part of her childhood in Georgia, but certainly not most of it.
We rated the Nunn invitation claim Mostly False.
About the Author
