The Cincinnati Enquirer is supposed to be the local paper of record. The one local folks go to who still read the paper – which is evidently a smaller and smaller population every year. My wife and I still get it, but I think they’re down to two families on our block that do (including us.)
Anyway, as I’m sure most people know, I’m running for re-election to Congress, and a guy named Aftab Pureval is running against me. He’s run some TV ads, and I’ve run some TV ads. And there have been two outside groups that have run ads thus far, one favoring him and one favoring me.
The one favoring me is run by the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), set up by Speaker Paul Ryan, and intended to help Republican candidates (like me.) We are not allowed to coordinate with outside groups like CLF. They pay for and run their own ads. Candidates (like me) see them after they appear on TV, but they’re run independently of our campaigns.
Here’s the background to the TV ad CLF ran. Aftab Pureval worked for four years for a Washington D.C. lobbying firm named White and Case. Interestingly, in Pureval’s 60 second TV ad introducing himself to voters, he failed to mention this fact, even though it’s the longest job he’s ever held. Also interesting is that Aftab constantly bashes special interests and lobbyists, even though that’s exactly what White and Case was, and is. (Hypocrisy?)
And perhaps most interesting, and disturbing, is that White and Case has represented a number of terrorist-supporting organizations and governments, including Libya, against the interests of American victims of terrorism. The Enquirer felt it was a stretch to blame Pureval for representing supporters of terrorism, saying he was a “small fish in a big pond” and that the settlement with Libya “occurred a month before Pureval joined the firm.” What the Enquirer failed to mention was that White and Case continued to represent Libya for two years after Pureval joined the firm, that the lawyer that handled the whole thing contributed $2,700 to Aftab Pureval, the maximum amount allowed under the law, and that he and Aftab worked closely together. The Enquirer had this information, but they chose not to report it.
Okay, so much for the Enquirer’s fact checking of the conservative outside group’s ad attacking Aftab Pureval. Now let’s go to the Enquirer’s fact checking of the liberal outside group’s ad attacking me. But wait. They didn’t bother to do one. Despite the fact that the left wing group’s ad against me actually was full of lies, and at least partially funded by none other than George Soros – silence. Maybe it’s just as well. Had they done a fact check on the bogus ads against me, they might have just thought they were fine.
To refresh your memory, the gist of the ads were that I allegedly voted against requiring pre-existing conditions coverage. Which is a lie. I voted to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a Republican plan that required pre-existing conditions coverage. The ads further claimed that only the wealthy got tax cuts, when the vast majority of Americans actually got tax cuts. But the Enquirer saw fit to let these allegations go uncommented on.
And while I’m on the topic of the blatant bias that is more and more apparent in our local paper of record, let me make one more observation. There’s barely a day that goes by when the Cincinnati Enquirer doesn’t see fit to publish a scathing letter-to-the-editor taking me to task for one thing or another, often filled with flagrant untruths, and more often than not praising my opponent. There’s no question that many of these letters are orchestrated by his campaign.
I have had a considerable number of people send me copies of letters they’ve submitted to the Enquirer supporting things I’ve done or positions I’ve taken, or refuting the vicious letters the Enquirer has seen fit to print. They are almost never published.
Let me just conclude with this. Donald Trump once famously claimed that, in his opinion, the mainstream media, or the “fake news” as he likes to call them is now the “enemy of the people.” I addressed that topic in my blog that week, and you can read what I said by clicking here . I’d like to think that the Enquirer is not the enemy, but it’s becoming pretty clear to me, that they’re on the other team.
