{"id":3960,"date":"2012-03-12T23:46:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T05:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=3960"},"modified":"2012-03-12T23:46:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T05:46:40","slug":"fact-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/03\/fact-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact Check"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Republican presidential candidates aren’t the only ones throwing mud at their opponents. Florida’s senate race is getting dirty too. A new internet attack ad targets U.S. Representative Connie Mack’s employment and financial history.<\/p>\n

Republican Candidate George Lemieux paid for the ad. It’s a full minute and a half and is\u00a0only available on the web. It was\u00a0produced to compare Mack to Charlie Sheen. Link to web ad<\/a> also Web Ad 2<\/a><\/p>\n

The ad makes many bold claims, including saying “his only real job in the real world – an events coordinator for Hooters.”<\/p>\n

Before Mack’s political career, he worked at\u00a0LTP Management Group<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It owns and operates many restaurants – Hooters is one of them.<\/p>\n

The ad says he was an events coordinator. Mack’s campaign says he was a marketing executive.<\/p>\n

We dug a little further back and found Mack held two full-time jobs during and shortly after college selling exercise equipment at Nautilus and had a sales job with Hilton Grand Vacations.<\/p>\n

Mack also worked at\u00a0Marine Concepts<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in Cape Coral, while in high school.<\/p>\n

Brian Howser says Mack worked side-by-side with him sanding boat moldings.<\/p>\n

“He came in after school part-time, and then he started working full time. He was a really good worker. He learned a lot in a short period of time,” Howser told NBC2.<\/p>\n

So, we rank the claim Mack’s only real job was an events coordinator at Hooters as false.<\/p>\n

The ad takes a stab at his financial history too, saying Mack “\u2026even failed to pay his child support.”<\/p>\n

PolitiFact Florida fact-checked this claim finding Mack made one late payment in 2006.<\/p>\n

Visually, the ad shows multiple delinquent notices.<\/p>\n

“The ad again is distorting the truth by the visuals; that making it sound like Connie Mack was a dead-beat dad, or repeatedly did not pay child support,” said Aaron Sharockman, a writer and editor with PolitiFact.<\/p>\n

Plus, the payments weren’t for child support. It was assistance for his ex-wife.<\/p>\n

“The actual documents say temporary support, or temporary alimony. It never references child support,” said Sharockman.<\/p>\n

Based on that information, we rank claims Mack failed to pay his child support as false.<\/p>\n

The Gazette<\/em> is committed to fact checking all candidates’ claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican presidential candidates aren’t the only ones throwing mud at their opponents. Florida’s senate race is getting dirty too. A new internet attack ad targets U.S. Representative Connie Mack’s employment… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}