Campaign ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and North Carolina are using the cost of living and government policy to attack Senate candidates, but several claims omit important context or present incomplete comparisons.
An ad targeting Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson says she missed nearly 200 congressional votes, including votes involving crime, child pornography and health care costs.
In New Hampshire, an attack ad says Democrat Chris Pappas opposed funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals. Describing his vote only as opposition to rural-hospital funding leaves out that broader dispute.
In North Carolina, Democrat Roy Cooper’s ad uses Republican Michael Whatley’s statements that grocery, gasoline and housing prices were down and that there was no inflation. By the later measurements cited in the advertising dispute, grocery prices, gasoline prices and inflation had risen, although some housing-price measures had declined. Whatley’s campaign defended his economic message by comparing prices with those during Joe Biden’s presidency.