South Fairfax News

Virginia residents will head to the ballots in November to decide who will lead their state, and former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has already been challenged on the accuracy of statements made in not one but two political ads.

On July 22, McAuliffe released his first TV ad of the general election, titled "Because of You," trying to contrast the difference between himself and the Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin, whom McAuliffe calls in the ad an avid supporter of former Republican President Donald J. Trump. 

"The McAuliffe campaign is up on TV with this contrast spot right out of the gate – Tells you everything you need to know about competitiveness of race," Medium Buying posted in a tweet with a link to the video.

"When I was governor last time, I worked with reasonable Republicans to get things done," McAuliffe says in the ad. "We created thousands of new jobs, put billions into our infrastructure projects and a billion dollars into education. But let me be clear, Glen Youngkin is not a reasonable Republican. He is a loyalist to Donald Trump. Well, you know what, folks? I'm running because of you."

The ad's claims about education came under immediate scrutiny, Fox News reported.

“PolitiFact has hit McAuliffe with multiple fact-checks on the claim since the former governor started touting it while in office, calling it ‘mostly false,’" Fox reported.

"We are taking Virginia's investment in public education to the highest level in the commonwealth's history," McAuliffe said back in December 2015. 

In 2016, PolitiFact branded that remark as mostly false. 

“The governor’s education budget does not rise to the levels reached one to three years before the most recent recession," PolitiFact reported. "So we rate the governor’s claim Mostly False,” the article stated. 

Four years later, on Jan. 24, 2019, McAuliffe said that during his governorship, Virginia made "the largest investment ever in K-12 education." 

PolitiFact again fact-checked his statement and rated it “mostly false.”

This is the second time during the general election that a McAuliffe ad has been fact-checked. McAuliffe’s digital ad that tried to portray Youngkin as actually praising McAuliffe earned Three Pinocchios from The Washington Post. 

“This ad slices and dices Youngkin’s comments to misleadingly claim that Youngkin praised McAuliffe’s tenure as governor,” the Post reported.

The Washington Post's fact-check came after PolitiFact reported that McAuliffe’s ad “edits and alters Youngkin’s sentences and, in instances, presents them out of context.”

PolitiFact added, “So, contrary to McAuliffe’s assertion, Youngkin’s 2017 words do not prove he was a ‘big fan’ of the former governor’s economic policies, or that his current criticism of McAuliffe’s stewardship is a flip-flop.”

"McAuliffe has been called out many times for making false claims that he made a record investment in education," Macaulay Porter, Youngkin's spokeswoman, told Fox News. “This is his M.O.; make a dishonest statement and hope no one checks the facts."

According to PolitiFact’s website, McAuliffe’s 40-year political career has garnered him a scorecard of 25 ratings of Mostly False, False or "Pants on Fire."