May 17, 2018 10:14 AM UTC

More Bad News for Walker Stapleton

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The folks over at 9News picked up on the falsehoods in Republican Walker Stapleton’s first TV ad in the race for Governor — something we first pointed out on Tuesday.

Brandon Rittiman and Anna Staver break down Stapleton’s ad in their latest “Truth Test“:

CLAIM: “I was the only treasurer in the country with the courage to support Donald Trump’s tax cuts. “

VERDICT: False

Walker is one of 31 Republican state treasurers across the country and many of them supported Trump’s tax plan.

The treasurers of Kentucky and Utah both penned opinion pieces in favor of federal tax reform.

And the treasurers of Idaho and Missouri traveled to Washington D.C. to talk about tax reform with the president’s team while the bill was being debated in Congress.

‘We held a press conference just outside the west wing in support of the tax bill,” Idaho Treasurer Ron Crane said. “It had just passed the [U.S. House of Representatives], so we were very excited about that and very supportive.”

Crane even got a shout out on Twitter for his work on tax reform from Oklahoma’s treasurer.

9NEWS asked the Stapleton campaign how it justified the claim in its ad, and they pointed to one White House press release from December where he’s the only state treasurer quoted on a long list of supporters. [Pols emphasis]

That response from Stapleton’s campaign is an absolute gem. This one time, in a press release…

Stapleton is never going to come across particularly well in television ads because of his general awkwardness, but his campaign isn’t doing him any favors by making him trot out lines that are easily disproven. Stapleton’s camp even used this “only treasurer in the country” line as part of its email introduction of the TV spot. Anybody with access to the Internet could have fact-checked this claim in a matter of minutes (it took us about three minutes in total).

We’ll leave the last word here to 9News in their summation of Stapleton’s ad:

In the name of making himself seem like the most courageous voice on all of them, this ad is writing checks his record can’t cash.