With Election Day tomorrow for the Virginia gubernatorial race, ads and claims are flying fast and furious. One of those claims, made in an ad by Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, mischaracterized Republican candidate (and Virginia’s current Attorney General) Ken Cuccinelli on his education plan.
Here is the ad, which can be seen below:
In the ad, which focuses on Cuccinelli’s “radical” agenda, a voice says Cuccinelli “would take money away from public schools to fund private schools, forcing local communities to raise property taxes.” The first claim’s reference point is the Richmond Times-Dispatch from September 24, and the second is The Washington Post on May 9.
However, both the first claim and citations for both statements are very misleading. From the top:
Regarding taking money from schools, PolitiFact declared this a “Mostly False” statement. In short, McAulife’s claim ignores a few clarifying facts about Cuccinelli’s plan. From Politifact:
· At the absolute most, it would cost “one-third of 1 percent of the state’s public education budget.”
· “Cuccinelli says he would not cut the K-12 budget to pay for his plan.”
· Cuccinelli is “proposing tax credits for the parents of children in failing public schools to defray their costs of switching to private education.”
Furthermore, Cuccinelli’s campaign website provides greater context to his plan:
Additionally, while Virginia technically allows charter schools, any charter school has to be approved by the local school district within the boundaries it would be operating. This creates a conflict of interest as school districts do not want competition. It’s like Pepsi having to get permission from the Board of Directors of Coca-Cola to sell a new product.
In 2013, SJ 302, was introduced by Senator Mark Obenshain, proposing a constitutional amendment to grant the state Board of Education authority to establish charter schools within the school divisions of the Commonwealth.
In other words, Cuccinelli is not sacrificing publicly educated students on the altar of a “radical” plan to fund private schools.
With regards to McAuliffe’s citations, both are very misleading. While the sources themselves are sound – two news sources well-known to Virginia voters – a significant amount of context is missing.
First, the ad quotes from the Times-Dispatch the following: Cuccinelli would “divert funding from public schools to private schools.” The ad fails to note the precise source of the claim: an op-ed by Jeffrey Bourne, the Chairman of the School Board for Richmond Public Schools.
In other words, McAuliffe’s campaign is citing an opinion piece by a person with a conflict of interest in the issue being addressed. Nowhere in the ad are these important distinctions noted.
With regards to raising property taxes – text in the ad cites The Washington Post as saying Cuccinelli’s plan is “a recipe for higher property taxes” – the ad grossly mischaracterizes the context of the Post’s statement. The statement in question was indeed made by the editorial board of the Post, but the editorial focused on criticisms of Cuccinelli’s tax plan, not his education plan. The relevant section:
Unsurprisingly, leaders of some of the state’s largest jurisdictions saw Mr. Cuccinelli’s blueprint as a recipe for higher property taxes, which are imposed at the local level. How else would localities compensate for the loss in state revenue that directly supports public schools?
Huffington Post reports that while neither candidate is looked upon positively by voters, Cuccinelli is far less popular. Perhaps it’s because of misleading and dishonest ads like this one, which take Cuccinelli out of context and fail to provide one gram of evidence that McAuliffe’s plans – which are not referenced in the ad – are good for Virginia residents.