FactCheck.org calls Byrne attack ad on Young ‘nonsense’

(Above: Bradley Byrne’s “Profit” ad targeted at Dean Young)

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org website yesterday took a look at a recent TV ad released by the Bradley Byrne campaign suggesting his First Congressional District opponent, Dean Young, had profited personally by taking advantage of “good Christian people” who donated to one of his PACs.

The post by FactCheck’s Eugene Kiely argues that the Christian Family Association PAC created by Young, which the Byrne ad asserts was a major source of income for Young, wasn’t created to “promote Christian values” as the Byrne ad claimed. Instead, Kiely writes it was created to get Roy Moore elected to the Alabama Supreme Court.

Kiely also contends that the profiteering allegations by the Byrne campaign are disingenuous. He maintains that although Young’s company took money from that PAC, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was “profit.”

“It’s true that Young’s company, PMM Consulting, received $168,000 from the PAC — which is, as the ad says, 95 percent of the PAC’s contributions. But not all of it, if any of it, was ‘profit,’ as the ad claimed,” Kiely wrote. “For example, records show that most of it — about $129,000 — went for advertising and that would include the cost of placing TV and radio ads in addition to any production costs that were incurred by PMM.”

Byrne’s campaign responded to Kiely’s queries about their ad’s claims with a statement saying the ad is “100 percent accurate.”

This is not the first time FactCheck.org has dealt with political ads related to Bradley Byrne. During the 2010 Alabama gubernatorial race, the site defended Byrne against a “largely bogus 11th-hour attack … by a shadowy front group that refused to disclose its donors or leaders.”

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