The race for senator from Michigan is tightening. Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan) has a lead in the polls over Republican politician John James, but that lead has frighteningly dropped below the margin of error. If the election was held today, James would have a chance of eking out a narrow victory over the incumbent.
John James, job creator who refuses handouts. **Jobs created with tax breaks were soon lost. No enduring jobs created.
It’s understandable: people don’t know much about John James besides what he’s told them: that he’s West Point grad, a combat veteran, and a job creator, asterisk, asterisk.
Much more worrying, though, is that people might believe the lies James has been saying about the incumbent. Such as that Peters, who has a nearly perfect roll call vote attendance record, doesn’t show up for work.
It must be true, because the ads give the numbers 84% and 89%, which are backed up by cherry-picked facts and not invented out of thin air. Namely that Peters missed a few hearings for subcommittees that didn’t decide anything, and from which he could have gotten the same information by reading the minutes.
James’s deceitful ads have been running for weeks, but perhaps Peters’s campaign manager decided that, with his comfortable lead, Peters did not need to respond directly or even acknowledge James’s false claims.
That changed last week. Peters has a new ad that explains that Peters does show up for work, to work for Michigan. The ad cites, in small but very readable letters, Politico and the Detroit Free Press, as well as GovTrack.
A couple of weeks ago, the Free Press ran a fact check by PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson on one of James’s deceitful ads.
Here, we’ll look at James’ assertion that Peters is "known for doing nothing" and that he "skipped 84% of small business hearings (and) skipped 89% of hearings on China."
…
James’ campaign staff said the numbers refer to Peters’ service on the House Small Business Committee and the Congressional Executive Commission on China, which he joined as a senator in 2015.
Committee attendance statistics are not easily accessible; determining them requires scrutinizing transcripts of dozens of committee hearings, ... The James campaign said it found that Peters missed 43 of the 51 Small Business Committee hearings in 2011 and 2012, when he was serving in the House and before he was elected to the Senate.
As for the China commission, the James campaign said it used the same method and found that Peters missed 16 of 18 meetings since Peters joined the committee.
No one at the Peters campaign disputes the data behind these cherry-picked numbers. But they also point out that as a congressman, “Peters was also a member of the House Financial Services Committee, a more powerful panel.”
"A lot of committees will schedule hearings at the same time, making it virtually impossible to attend, in a meaningful sense, all of them," said Joshua Huder, a Georgetown University political scientist.
So let’s say that on a particular day, Peters has to choose between attending a small business commission meeting that might not even create any meaningful legislation, and a House finance meeting that might actually do something worthwhile for small business, and both are scheduled for the same time. Gee, let’s choose the less impactful committee.
The focus on committee attendance also overlooks that Peters cosponsored the Small Business Jobs Act, which eased access to credit by small businesses and was signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Maybe you’ve also heard of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That’s an important one, and as a senator, Peters is on it. As well as three other important committees.
Each of those committees is considered influential, yet it’s notable that the ad focuses on the China panel, which is not a traditional congressional committee and does not generate or approve legislation.
The panel was created in 2000 to monitor China's compliance with international human rights standards, to encourage the development of the rule of law in China, and to maintain a list of victims of human rights abuses in China. It is charged with submitting an annual report to the president. Fox News reported that "many of the members of the commission ... had spotty attendance at the commission's hearings."
...
"It exists to monitor activity in China, which is largely done by staff," [Steven S.] Smith [from Washington University in St. Louis] said. He added that the Trump administration has not filled the five seats that are reserved for presidential appointees.
So if the Trump doesn’t consider the China commission important, why should Peters or any Michigan voter? Does James have any reason to care about it besides using it to disparage his opponent? Hypothetically, Senator James wouldn’t attend those meetings either. Let’s keep that strictly hypothetical, let James say that he would attend.
Peters has a nearly perfect floor vote attendance record. In fact,
In 2019, the most recent full year available, Peters missed exactly zero floor votes, which put him in a 16-way tie for the best vote attendance in the chamber. Peters’ 100% voting rate was equal to that of the chamber's two leaders, Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Also consider that
Peters has received high marks for effectiveness from the Center for Effective Lawmaking, an independent institution run by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
During the 2017-18 congressional year, the center ranked Peters as the fourth-most effective Democrat out of 48 in the chamber. ...
"Despite his minority-party status, he was very active in navigating a number of legislative items through the Republican-controlled Senate," Alan Wiseman, the center’s co-director, told the Michigan Advance. "His success in advancing his legislative agenda in the 115th Congress is greater than one would expect, given his relatively low seniority in the Senate."
When we look at Peters’s record impartially, he looks pretty good. And when we look at his record with the aim of finding something to smear him with, he also looks good, and we’re forced to take minor things, distort them and blow them way out of proportion.
So why should we replace an effective senator like Peters with an unproven newcomer like James, who hasn’t served in the House or in the Michigan legislature, or at least been a small town mayor?
The answer is we shouldn’t. Peters has proven himself in the U. S. House and the U. S. Senate. He deserves another term in the Senate and I intend to vote for him to get another term.
Basing lies on cherry-picked numbers is just one dirty trick in the Republican bag of dirty tricks. Another one is pretending that your opponent has committed a major transgression against campaign etiquette, like attacking an opponent’s wife and kids.
Apparently there’s an ad for Peters saying James won’t protect pre-existing conditions. I haven’t actually seen that ad. But a very indignant Liz James, John’s wife, appears in a new ad complaining about dishonest ads from Peters, and telling him to leave her son out of it.
How dare you, Gary Peters, bringing your opponent’s chronically ill son into this!? Except Peters hasn’t actually done that and Liz James is not actually accusing him of that. Liz James actually tells Peters not to bring in children with pre-existing conditions “like my son” into the campaign…
But people are going to misunderstand, and that’s precisely what the Machiavelli in the James campaign is counting on. They ran the ad with the James kid several times on Friday. I didn’t see it Saturday or Sunday, and maybe they won’t run it again. The seed for yet another lie has been planted.
Of course John James will make sure that his own son gets whatever medical care is necessary. Now that we’ve gotten past the feigned outrage, let’s ask: what about people with pre-existing conditions who aren’t related to John James? Does John James care about medical coverage for those people?
Well, given that James is a Republican, I would say not. How would Senator John James have voted on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as “Obamacare”? We can only speculate. James has called the ACA a “monstrosity.” But I don’t put too much stock in anything James says.
And how would Senator Gary Peters have voted on the ACA? That’s also a matter of speculation. But it’s a safe bet that Senator Peters would have voted for it, because then-Rep. Peters (D-Michigan, U. S. House District 9) voted for it.
Therefore I trust Peters to look out for all people with pre-existing conditions, not just the ones in his family.
Here’s a link to Gary Peters’s campaign website: petersformichigan.com
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