CAMPAIGN AD REALITY CHECK

Friday, Sept. 29, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

What the ad says

Tessa Hafen: I'm Tessa Hafen. I approved this message to set the record straight.

Announcer: Jon Porter will do anything to stay in office. Running sleazy ads he knows are lies about Tessa Hafen's Nevada roots. Why? Because, Porter wants to hide his real record. Votes with George Bush 90 percent. Billions in tax giveaways to big oil. Cuts in veterans' benefits. And Porter cast the deciding vote against bonuses for our troops.

Jon Porter, forget his sleazy campaign. Remember his record.

What the ad's trying to do

Hafen is a Nevada native, yet she is being portrayed as an outsider in an ad by Porter. Hafen is not taking any chances, though, because she is not well known and can't afford to let the impression sink in. She wants to knock down the charge and then change the subject to Porter's record.

What's accurate

So is Porter raising these questions about Hafen moving back from her Washington, D.C., job to run against him because he wants to hide his real record? Sort of. He wants to change the subject from his support of Bush and raise questions about his opponent.

Does he vote with Bush 90 percent of the time? That is an average of his percentages for 2003, 2004 and 2005. It actually averages out to 86.7 percent. Not surprisingly, Hafen rounded up. This will be effective in direct proportion to the president's low approval ratings, which have been inching up lately.

The billions in tax breaks to big oil is the standard Democratic description of last year's energy bill. Republicans called it incentive-laden; Democrats described it as a special-interest giveaway.

As for being the deciding vote that killed bonuses for troops, that is technically true. In fact, Porter switched his vote at the last minute and the bill died on a tie vote. But this also was partisan politics at its finest. The Democrats sought to strip the money out of an account paying for Iraqi petroleum imports and place the cash in a military personnel fund. Porter said he switched after learning of other troop benefits in the legislation. But this was an attempt by Democrats to take credit for a troop benefit and Republicans were not about to let that happen.

What's wrong or misleading

The claim about veterans' benefit cuts is a classic example of what happens to members of Congress running for re-election. They cast so many votes and so many of them are procedural that it is easy to cherry-pick to find ones to make them look bad. Such is the case here. The specific vote was a vote this year to leave a half-billion dollars in military projects and veterans' benefits unprotected and thus vulnerable to being stripped out. Porter didn't actually vote for cuts - but Hafen is saying he allowed them to be made.