The Rep. Craig Ford “Too Hot for YouTube” videos are a week old today and I thought I’d revisit them now that the election aftermath has died down.
As I made my way through the halls of the State House this past week, countless legislators, lobbyists and staffers pulled me to the side to discuss the videos.
“Ford is walking around here furious,” said one legislator. “Those videos might not be ‘career enders,’ but they are definitely ‘career limiters.’” A lobbyist added, “All Craig Ford thinks about is how he can position himself for higher office. He might as well find something else to think about now that those videos are out there.”
But my absolutely favorite story was from a legislator who spoke to Rep. Ford and was told by the House Minority Leader that the videos were “cut and spliced.” Now that got me excited! Rep. Ford, PLEASE come forward with any claims that the videos were doctored. I’ll look forward to it.
In addition to calling rural Alabamians racists, demeaning Republican women in the legislature, bad-mouthing doctors for being successful, and talking about spinning Obamacare “to where it’s a positive thing,” Rep. Ford also spent a good bit of time completely making up numbers to support his ramblings.
As if he could discredit himself any further, here are a couple of “stats” to consider.
Misleading stat #1:
“The most votes he (Jim Folsom) ever received in a statewide campaign — and he’s been in 3 I think — was 960,000 votes.”
Actually, Folsom has been in 4 statewide races and the most votes he ever received was in the 700k range.
[Good post in the comments by Peck Fox: “Actually, Folsom ran statewide for PSC twice (1978 and 1982), US Senate once (1980), Lt. Governor four times (1986, 1990, 2006 and 2010), and Governor once (1994). The most votes he ever received was 768,988 in the 1990 LTG race.”]
Misleading state #2:
When discussing Jim Folsom’s 2010 campaign against Kay Ivey, Rep. Ford says, “He got 1.2 million [votes] and still got beat.”
Actually, he only got 718,636 votes in 2010.
Rep. Ford then goes into a story about these 260,000 voters that he made up and how they supposedly polled them and found out that 90% of them were rural white voters who were racist and only voted in an effort to send a message the President Obama.
At best, that’s what they call “playing fast and loose with the facts.” And one is left to wonder, on what else is Rep. Ford misleading us?
I’m embedding the video below. Everything I outlined above is right at the beginning of the clip. If you’d like to revisit the original post, click HERE.
