ICYMI: FACT CHECK: KATIE PORTER ATTACK AD FUNDED BY CRYPTO BILLIONAIRES RULED FALSE
Sacramento Bee Fact Checker: “The ad is misleading to voters”
IRVINE—The Sacramento Bee today rated a recent attack ad claiming U.S. Senate candidate and Congresswoman Katie Porter has taken corporate campaign cash “mostly false.” The multi-million dollar ad buy, funded by shady crypto billionaires, began airing in California earlier this week.
Porter continues to be the only elected official running to represent California in the U.S. Senate who’s never taken corporate PAC money, refuses donations from federal lobbyists, and swears off contributions from executives from Big Pharma, Big Oil, and the Big Banks. She is running for the U.S. Senate to shake up the status quo in Washington and unrig the rules bought and paid for by corporate special interests.
Read more below:
Sacramento Bee: “Fact check: Did Katie Porter get campaign cash from Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Banks?” Andrew Sheeler, February 14, 2024
Did Katie Porter, a dogged opponent of taking corporate political money, actually take such funds?
An ad from the crypto-sponsored political action committee Fairshake targets Porter, D-Irvine, who has been an outspoken consumer advocate during her nearly six years in Congress.
“She claims not to take corporate PAC money. No. Instead, Katie Porter takes her campaign cash directly from Big Pharma, Big Oil and the Big Bank executives. More than $100,000,” the ad says in part.
The PAC, whose donors include AH Capital Management, Coinbase, Ripple and Jump Crypto, has raised more than $85 million this election cycle, according to the website OpenSecrets.
After the ad dropped, Porter fired back, writing in a tweet that “shadowy crypto billionaires don’t want a strong voice for consumers in the Senate. They fear people who call out corporate greed, so they’re spending millions on dishonest dark-money ads against me.”
Porter is running for seat held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat, currently held by Sen. Laphonza Butler. Other leading contenders include Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and Steve Garvey, a retired professional baseball player running as a Republican.
Claim: Katie Porter accepted donations from executives from Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Banks.
Rating: Mostly false.
Details: The ad is misleading to viewers. It lists Spectrum Pharmaceuticals as part of “Big Pharma,” Wood Oil Company as part of “Big Oil” and Royal Business Bank as a “Big Bank.”
Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, owned by Assertio Holdings, is a Boston-based pharmaceutical company. However, neither Spectrum nor Assertio belong to the industry trade group PhRMA, which lobbies on behalf of the industry’s biggest drug makers.
Wood Oil Company is an oil supplier based out of Gardena. It does not belong to the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies on behalf of the industry.
Royal Business Bank is a Community Development Financial Institution based in Los Angeles that specializes in providing financial services to Chinese-American, Korean-American and other Asian-American markets.
It does not meet the official definition of a Systemically Important Financial Institution (commonly known as a financial institution that is “too big to fail”) as defined by the federal Dodd-Frank Act as having $50 billion or more in assets.