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ICYMI: Parson’s PAC Caught Lying Again About Nicole Galloway

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Politifact Rates Uniting Missouri’s Claim That Galloway’s Campaign Is Funded By Groups Seeking to Defund the Police As False


In an effort to stop Nicole Galloway’s momentum, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s political allies have been airing ads riddled with false claims about Galloway, Missouri’s Democratic State Auditor. Uniting Missouri, Parson’s PAC, released several ads attempting to tie Galloway to groups seeking to defund the police, but a fact check by Politifact found those claims are entirely false.


The ads proclaim Galloway’s campaign is being “bankrolled” by “extremists” that want to defund the police. But after sorting through Galloway’s finance reports, Politifact “found no contributions made by any group that expressly and openly supports defunding the police.” In fact, Galloway’s campaign is largely funded by small-dollar donations from individuals and labor unions.


Parson’s PAC has been caught lying to Missourians several times this cycle. A fact check from KMBC earlier this month found another ad was spreading false claims about Galloway and her husband. In fact, the original version of the ad was so far from being true that nine Missouri stations took it down. And in September, KMOV investigated a separate Uniting Missouri ad about Galloway and reported nearly every claim in the ad was false or misleading.


It’s obvious why Parson’s political allies are making these desperate attempts to smear Galloway – she’s picking up steam in her bid to beat Parson. Just today, Galloway announced her biggest fundraising quarter yet, raking in over $3 million with 19 days until the election. And earlier this week, Galloway was endorsed by Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who rebuked Parson’s COVID-19 response and said Galloway would listen to facts and science.


Read more about Uniting Missouri’s lies below.


Politifact: Checking ads that say Galloway’s campaign is being funded by groups seeking to defund the police


Uniting Missouri, a political action committee in support of Gov. Mike Parson’s bid for reelection, has been running several attack ads against Nicole Galloway, who is looking to unseat him in the Nov. 3 election.


The purpose of these ads is to connect Galloway to groups that want to defund the police and reinvest some funding into social services, an idea that has gained traction over the past few months in response to the police killings of several Black Americans during altercations.


A Sept. 2 ad said: “Galloway’s campaign is being bankrolled by the same extremists who want to defund our police.”


Another ad released that same day featured a woman named Le’Jon who talks about how crime has affected her family. She then goes on to make word-for-word the same claim as above. An Aug. 19 ad featured a police officer named Rob Dean who said that Galloway’s campaign “has been funded by left-wing extremists who want to defund our police.”


We wanted to see if that was true, so we looked through all of Galloway’s campaign finance reports since she announced her candidacy in August 2019.


[…]


After sorting through these reports, we found no contributions made by any group that expressly and openly supports defunding the police. Most of the donations were from individuals and labor unions.


Her top donors were the Carpenters District Council of Greater St Louis & Vicinity with $69,300, Plumbers and Gasfitters Local 8 with $25,500 and United Automobile Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America with $20,000.


[…]


Kevin Donohoe, a spokesperson for Galloway’s campaign, said he was unaware of any evidence supporting the ad’s claim. He pointed to numerous occasions where Galloway has said that she does not support defunding the police. We found one such occasion reported as early as July 2. 


Our ruling


Uniting Missouri PAC’s ad claims that “Galloway’s campaign is being bankrolled by the same extremists who want to defund our police.”


At least one group, Indivisible, has been encouraging people to donate to Galloway’s campaign. However, to say the group is “bankrolling” her campaign when it hasn’t directly contributed any money is wrong. We rate this claim False.