New reporting has found that attack ads against Rep. Emilia Sykes are “misleading” and that independent news outlets “have already run fact-checks dismissing the ads as untrue.”This is the *FOURTH* time that the message of this ad has been fact checked as false – an identical copy against Rep. Kaptur and its claims were “debunked” by WTVG and WTOL in Toledo.
DCCC Spokesperson Katie Smith:
“Republicans and Big Pharma are lying about Congresswoman Sykes because they can’t beat her actual record of fighting to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Meanwhile, Kevin Coughlin couldn’t make it clearer that he wants to cut the earned benefits that Northeast Ohioans depend on, which is why they’ll reject him again next year.”
Ohio Capital Journal: Right-wing dark money group running misleading attack ads targeting Ohio Democrats
- The midterm election is still more than a year away, but that hasn’t stopped one right-wing group from running misleading ads in Ohio attacking vulnerable Democrats. In Akron and Toledo, ads claim U.S. Reps. Emilia Sykes and Marcy Kaptur voted no “when the time came to protect and fund Medicare.”
- “I have seen it,” University of Akron political scientist David Cohen said. His impression?
- “Absurd,” he said, “in that Democrats have owned the health care issue for decades, and absurd in the context of the Big, Beautiful Bill.”
- The sweeping policy measure, passed without a single Democratic vote this month, could lead to big increases in uninsured Americans and significant cuts to Medicare.
- Television stations in Toledo have already run fact-checks dismissing the ads as untrue.
- Democrats voted against a continuing resolution in March that would avert a government shutdown through the end of September.
- At the time, Democratic negotiators were pushing for a short-term funding bill to give them time to reach a deal. Republicans turned them down.
- Medicare is a mandatory program, so benefit checks go out even in a government shutdown.
- The March continuing resolution extended funding for important, related programs like community health centers and rural hospitals, but again, only through the end of September. That’s the entire argument proposing that Sykes, Kaptur, and 28 other Democrats failed to support Medicare.
- In the meantime, Republicans’ passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could cut the program by almost half a trillion dollars by 2034, according to Congressional Budget Office projections. Existing law puts a brake, known as sequestration, on mandatory spending if the deficit gets too big.
- The ad goes on to criticize Democratic lawmakers because they “rubber stamped the Biden pill penalty.”
- That critique relates to a law allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
- After the first round of negotiations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported that ‘penalty’ could’ve saved the program $6 billion had those prices been in place the year prior.
- American Action Network has put $7 million into the ad campaign… the good government organization Issue One noted last November that PhRMA gave AAN $3.5 million in 2023. Since 2010, PhRMA has given $38 million to the group.
- “If Republicans really want to talk about Medicare and Medicaid,” he said, “I think that’s a huge advantage in the ’26 mid-terms for Democrats.”
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