Ayotte: Hodes Wrong Again
December 4, 2009Well, it seems this has been a bad week for Team Hodes/NHDP when it comes to fact checking press releases and their website. Wednesday the NHDP hit Ayotte for meeting with DC TEA Party organizers. Well the only problem was, she wasn’t. Now today, it appears that Team Hodes is claiming he saved 16,000 jobs on his campaign website. Only problem, he can’t back up the numbers.
PAUL HODES, SAY WHAT
Hodes falsely claims to have created 16,000 jobs in
New Hampshire(Manchester, NH)- Earlier this week, Paul Hodes and the Democrats falsely attacked Kelly Ayotte for a meeting that never was scheduled and never happened. In continuing a trend, Paul Hodes is fabricating facts about his own record. Paul Hodes claimed on his website that he has “worked to create over 16,000 jobs for New Hampshire families.”
Hodes does not offer any citations for these 16,000 jobs, nor give an explanation as to how he created them. Additionally, according to government’s own estimates, the country has lost over 3.5 million jobs since Paul Hodes voted for the stimulus.
“Paul Hodes voted for nearly a trillion dollars in supposed stimulus that he claimed would save and create millions of jobs, and now is falsely claiming 16,000 jobs have been created,” said Brooks Kochvar, Campaign Manager for Kelly Ayotte. “Instead of making up claims of job creation, New Hampshire families need leadership that will work hard to strengthen our economy and get real results. That’s why Kelly Ayotte supports common sense solutions to get our economy back on track.”
In case you have any question about what his website said, here’s a screen shot.
Oh, and don’t bother looking for it on his website. Its already been taken down. It now says “thousands saved”. So if he stands by the numbers why take it down? Perhaps he realizes that “jobs saved or created” can’t be measured the way they were telling everyone they could.
Once again, a bad week for the NHDP and Team Hodes. I wonder if they will offer an explanation? Then again, isn’t pulling the number from their website admission enough that they were in the wrong?
TimothyHorrigan
Dec 4, 2009
There are a couple of possible problems with Ayotte’s press release.
Firstly, she needs to clarify her position vis vis the Tea-Whatever coalition. She was absolutely right in her inference that Hodes meant to disparage her by accusing her of being a teabagger, but the tea-types are closely aligned with her own party and have taken positions similar to her own (insofar as she has publicly divulged her positions.) It would as if she called him a “leftist”: yes, she would mean it to be an insult, but Hodes is in fact on the left and is not shy about explaining why he is on the left.
Secondly, we actually know where Hodes sourced the 16,000 jobs claim: it (almost certainly) came from the state ARRA/stimulus office, which her own deputy attorney general (the #2 person in her office after herself) was in charge of. That deputy, Orville “Bud” Fitch, is STILL in charge of NH’s ARRA activities. I suppose she can claim that Hodes misstated the information Fitch’s people gave him, but she runs the risk of impugning Fitch’s integrity and by extension her own if she pushes this too far.
Matt Suermann
Dec 4, 2009
So why did Hodes take down the number or offer the source? It still looks like he’s dodging and can’t prove the numbers. If it came from Fitch why didn’t he just say it was from his office? Lots of holes and Hodes thought he could get away with it but got caught.
TimothyHorrigan
Dec 4, 2009
I actually did go back and check recovery.gov: the official figure as of 6:15pm December 4 was 3528 jobs created. A 4:1 multiplier (caused basically by the fact that the recipients and their employers buy goods and services which would not have been bought otherwise) would get you up to 16,000.
Grant Bosse
Dec 4, 2009
Tom,
You’re wrong again. Hodes got that number from the jobs that the stimulus was “supposed” to create when it was passed. It’s completely bunk, but he still put it on his website as if it actually happened.
In fact, of the 3,500 jobs credited to the stimulus, we’ve already shown at New Hampshire Watchdog that 2,000 are for teachers who were already in the classroom. And a lot of the other 1,500 are for government workers who are being paid with stimulus money, but would have been on the job without it. Basically, all of the data at Recovery.gov is crap. Of course, if you make up a “multiplier”, you can claim it created any number of jobs. That would called lying.
Stop apologizing for Hodes’ blunder. He got caught red-handed.
New Hampshire
Dec 5, 2009
Again I must question why Tim Horrigan, NOT a Republican, is allowed to post here?
Certainly he could get his posts accepted over at BH?
Since they block all opposing views, he could be free to have his thoughts go unchallenged there.
“RedHampshire is a platform for New Hampshire Republicans to talk among themselves..”
Really?
New Hampshire
Dec 5, 2009
BTW, there are no ‘DC Tea Party Organizers’. If Ayotte was going to meet with organizers, it would be in NH. There is no organization coming from the top.
TimothyHorrigan
Dec 6, 2009
As for why I am allowed to post: it’s Tom DeRosa’s call. It’s his site. I do try to be respectful and substantive and bipartisan. It is useful to have an occasional left-leaning voice in the dialog. There is a whole subgenre of rightwing punditry (e.g., Jonah Goldberg, Ann Coulter & Michele Malkin) which is totally devoted to telling the right what the left’s beliefs are- and those pundits’ reportage tends to be quite inaccurate.
BH does allows opposing viewpoints, although it does disallow verbal bullying (even from people on its own side.) It also disallows repetitive postings: there were a few incidents where a rightwinger wd just ask the same rhetorical question over and over, getting the same answers every time. RH doesn’t allow that sort of behavior either.
Also, Steve Vaillancourt did unfortunately get banned from BH, but not because of his views, which are in fact shared by many NH Democrats. It wasn’t even because of how he expressed himself.
To get back to the subject at hand: the tea-whoevers are a national movement, and they are closely allied with the Republicans. Ayotte has a thin line to walk: on the one hand she can use their support to win, but she also needs enough other voters to get to 50.01%. The tea-types can only get her to within maybe 40.01% below the winning number. Hodes’s 16k jobs created by the stimulus is one of those unverifiable numbers which turn up in every campaign. I doubt every number which Ayotte’s campaign puts out will be 100% verifiable.
Grant Bosse
Dec 6, 2009
I like having Rep. Horrigan posting here. It saves a trip to BH to find out what the liberal excuse factory is cranking out today.
Thom Simmons
Dec 6, 2009
I far prefer to hear the contributions of real people, regardless of their party affiliation (or lack thereof), than the catty comments of anonymous posters which rarely add to any intellectual discourse….
steve vaillancourt
Dec 7, 2009
Amen, Grant. True believers like Rep Horrigan I can take; they are not nearly as dangerous as the slithery snakes who disguise their views and lurk in the netherlands stirring up trouble. Besides, what do you expect from a Rep from Durham….I ran my predictions for next year last night, and sad to say, there’s no way GOP will capture even one of the five Durham seats. Stay tuned for New Years for analysis, but here’s a preview..Rep. Horrigan will be back (if he chooses to run).
steve vaillancourt
Dec 7, 2009
Unfortunately Tim is wrong about the blueblogbigots. They don’t allow opposing views there. Why was I banned there. Because Kathy, aka Daughter of Dracula, and Raybo hate me. I never had any “verbal bullying” there, so get off that kick Tim. The most I ever did was refer to Kathy Sullivan as KathyS or KathyS’s opinion…only a true moron would consider such shortcuts as verbal bullying. I never even called her hag of Dracula there. As I recall, she was the one bullying me…so she should have been banned. If I recall, her comment was that a stuck clock is right twice a day. That’s much worse than KathyS, so she’s the bully and the bluebloggers are the bigots, and don’t believe for a moment they would allow anyone like Tim on their site. Another reason to be proud to be a Republican and Dems should hang their heads in shame.
TimothyHorrigan
Dec 7, 2009
What I meant was that Steve was presumably banned from BH just because Kathy S & Ray B are friends of the web site’s management and Steve is very much not Kathy & Ray’s friend. He shouldn’t have been banned: the comments I saw were not at all objectionable.
Steve is generally well-liked by the backbenchers in the Democratic caucus and not so well-liked by the leadership. I am guessing the situation is similar on the Republican side of the aisle. I wish we had a dozen or so more representatives with his gumption and his savvy.
Durham, BTW, currently is in a six person seat with Lee and Madbury. Lee will likely have at least one seat of its own after the 2011 redistricting, and has almost always had one exactly member during the many years it has shared its district with Durham.
steve vaillancourt
Dec 8, 2009
What Tim says makes my point even stronger about the blueblogbigots. He admits that they are stifling free speech not because of ideas but of who happens to be speaking, a truly dangerous and outrageous concept in a free society, something I trust Republicans and this web site will never resort to. Amazing how Dems who claim to favor free speech really don’t.
If Lee has more than 3300-3400 people, it will have to be given its own Rep. Constitutional amendment we passed guarntees any town with the numbers for a Rep will have its own-by the 2000 census, dividing the entire population of the state by 400, that number was 3089. Probably about an eight percent pop gain when we get 2010 census numbers in. This could actually help Republicans because while a Republican would never be able to win one of the six seats in the Durham-dominated area, a Dem would be favored in Lee but not an automatic. That’s also the case in Keene. A Republican is not likely to win citywide (as is currently done), but there might be one Republican-leaning ward. On the other had, Derry and Londonderry and big towns cannot be split up, so Republicans will continue to have advantages. This will no affect the 2010 election of course. I ran the numbers last night and came up with a net gain of 35-40 for Republicans in 2010. I actually added a seat in Coos County since without Dem Scott Merrick, GOP (Tholl) will probably pick up that seat. Of course, it’s still early, even for 2010, to say nothing of 2012, but it looks like new alignment in 2012 will favor GOP.
New Hampshire
Dec 9, 2009
I tend to side with Steve V on this.. BH will ask a question but then they don’t like the facts that support the answers, period. Has nothing to do with how it is said.
Perhaps Ayotte would do well to show support for the Tea Party people — they are after all, polling higher than the GOP at this time. Frankly I don’t think she stands a chance anyway and the TPs are non-partisan so they don’t endorse and would not promote one candidate over another. Who they vote for is up to the individuals.
People need to remain anonymous to protect themselves from attacks.