Featur e
on it titled, “Rep. Grayson Lowers the Bar”) and raked in tens of thousands with a fund-raising appeal drawing attention to the ad.
“The message was being lost because people started to focus on ‘submit to me’ versus the point of the ad,” says Todd Jurkowski, Grayson’s then-communica- tions director, “which is why we stopped running it and created a different ad with almost the same points but without ‘sub- mit to me.’” That follow-up ad, titled “The Facts,”
Rep. Alan Grayson’s ad, “Taliban Dan Webster,” suggested that his opponent tried to outlaw divorce. PolitiFact thought otherwise.
Submit to Me—Or Not Facing a well-known former Republican state House speaker in his bid for re-election, outspoken first-term Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Fla., swung for the fenc- es—and missed. On September 25, his campaign released a television ad arguing that his opponent, Daniel Webster, had views on women’s roles that placed him in the com- pany of religious extremists found in Iran or the Taliban. Among other things, the ad claimed that Webster “wants
to make divorce illegal” and “tried to deny battered wom-
en...the right to divorce their abusers.” Punctuating the ad were video outtakes from a speech in which Webster said, apparently approvingly, “Wives submit yourself to your own husband” and “She should submit to me, that’s in the Bible.” The phrase “submit to me” was repeated several more times before the ad’s title appeared at the bottom of the screen: “Taliban Dan Webster.” In its fact check, PolitiFact noted that the unedited ver-
sion of the speech quoted in the ad showed that Webster was actually advising men against citing Bible verses that command their wives to submit to them. “Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘She should submit to me,’” goes the unedited quote. Thus, PolitiFact judged the ad’s claim that Webster thinks wives should submit to their husbands False. The ad’s claims about restrictions on the right to di-
vorce were based on an unsuccessful 1990 Florida House bill sponsored by Webster to create an alternative form of matrimony called “covenant marriage” that could only be dissolved in case of adultery. PolitiFact judged these claims Half True since covenant marriages would have been vol- untary, but for those who chose them, divorce would be extremely restricted and unavailable on grounds of abuse. The ad received widespread criticism in the media.
Webster devoted the front page of his campaign Website to debunking its claims (including a
FactCheck.org piece
24 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition Was Buffett talking about Jeff Greene? No, said PolitiFact.
was released on October 6. In addition to losing the “submit to me” quotes, it did away with comparisons between Webster and Muslim extremists. The new ad’s ref- erences to covenant marriage were also much more precisely worded. “Webster sponsored a bill to create a form of mar- riage that would trap women in abusive
relationships,” read the narrator. Given the limitations on divorce in the bill Webster had sponsored, PolitiFact judged this version of the claim True. Grayson went on to lose by 18 points in November.
However, the uproar over the ad had “very little, if any, impact,” claims Jurkowski. “In the end the Democrats did not vote, and that is why we lost.”
Warren Buffett Said What? In the 2010 Democratic primary for Florida Senate, Con- gressman Kendrick Meek faced billionaire investor Jeff Greene, who was pumping millions of his own funds into his campaign. Meek’s first television ad, titled “He’s the Man” and released statewide in late July, argued that Greene had made his fortune “on Wall Street betting mid- dle-class families would lose their homes” and stated that “Warren Buffett called Greene’s scheme ‘financial weapons of mass destruction.’”
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