WASHINGTON - The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a statement Friday congratulating U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor for winning a watchdog group’s “Lie of the Year” award.
But PolitiFact, the Florida-based news organization that makes the annual designation, denied accusing Pryor of lying.
The group only blames President Barack Obama and his administration for telling Americans they could keep their health insurance under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
PolitiFact quoted Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who said Obama “would have to be delusional to think he was telling the truth.” It made no mention of Pryor.
But the Republican news release claimed “Mark Pryor Earns ‘Lie of the Year’ Award” and later said that Pryor had “won PolitiFact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ award.”
Similar emails were sent, naming several other senators being targeted by the Republican Party in 2014 who supposedly had been recognized by PolitiFact.
U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Dardanelle, is challenging Pryor for the Senate seat.
When asked by email if it is misleading to say Pryor was recognized for “Lie of the Year,” GOP senatorial committee spokesman Brook Hougeson defended the committee’s statement.
“President Obama said if you like your health care, you can keep it, Mark Pryor made the same promise,” she said. “The only thing misleading is telling people that they can keep their health care when they can’t.”
The committee’s news release points to a September 2012 interview with Arkansas Business in which Pryor said businesses would be able to keep their plans. The president’s statement referred to individuals.
The “Lie of the Year” claim was repeated by the Republican Party of Arkansas in a news release Friday afternoon.
In an article making the announcement Thursday, PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan named the promise by Obama that people could keep their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act as the “Lie of the Year.”
“The promise was impossible to keep,” the article states. “So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.”
PolitiFact is affiliated with the Tampa Bay Times and is known for ranking the accuracy of statements made by public officials.
Holan said by email Friday that the designation hadn’t been given to Pryor or anyone else on Capitol Hill. “Our Lie of the Year award went to President Obama, not any other public official,” she said.
Cotton spokesman David Ray defended the news release, saying Pryor made promises similar to what the president said. “The only thing misleading here are Mark Pryor and Barack Obama’s claims,” Ray said.
The committee was criticized for its response to an ad from Pryor in early December in which the senator referred to the Bible as his “north star.”
Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called the ad “interesting” and pointed to excerpts from an April 22, 2012, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article in which Pryor said his faith guides his political views, but he warned that the Bible could be interpreted differently by different people.
Dayspring questioned whether Pryor’s comments in the article were at odds with his campaign ad.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said the “attack was out of bounds.”
Ray later condemned the national Republican group’s email, calling it “incredibly bizarre and offensive.”
Pryor’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, called the releases dirty. “The same group that attacked Mark for his Christian faith is spreading more lies, and Arkansans deserve better than this kind of dirty Washington politics,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 12/14/2013