Fact check: Mailers use altered photo to claim NC Democrat supports defunding the police

Voters in a competitive state House district in Alamance County may have received a mailer showing Ricky Hurtado, the Democratic incumbent running for reelection, wearing a T-shirt that says “defund the police.” The problem? The photo isn’t real.

The mailer, which was distributed to voters in N.C. House District 63 this month, received much attention this week after Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson posted about it on Twitter, showing the altered photo of Hurtado next to the original photo, which shows him wearing a campaign T-shirt and picking up a bag of trash. Another mailer, targeting Democratic Rep. Terence Everitt of Wake County, was similarly altered to make it look like he was wearing a “defund the police” T-shirt.

Hurtado, a first-term representative who defeated former GOP state Rep. Steve Ross in a tight race in 2020, and now faces Ross in November once again, said he heard about the mailers after getting emails and phone calls from constituents who knew him and knew the photo “could not look like something that I would wear.”

“They were really upset because they understand that we’re in a competitive district, but to sort of be campaigning on misinformation and misleading information at that, trying to mislead voters, I just think this is beyond just distasteful; I think it should be illegal,” Hurtado told The News & Observer in an interview Monday. “We’re not even talking about people’s records or what I have voted on in Raleigh. It’s just pure political propaganda that is rooted in lies.”

A disclosure at the bottom of the mailer said it was paid for by Carolina Leadership Coalition, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization that states on its website that it was “formed to promote the principles that create a strong economy and education system in North Carolina.”

In addition to the altered photo, the mailer cites as proof of Hurtado’s support for “defunding the police” a pledge multiple Democratic candidates signed in 2018 and 2020, which Republicans have said was in support of policies such as examining and reallocating funding for law enforcement — a claim that Democrats have repeatedly denied.

Hurtado defends his record on law enforcement

Asked about the mailer, Michael Luethy, a consultant for the Carolina Leadership Coalition, did not deny that the photo of Hurtado had been altered.

Instead, Luethy, a longtime Republican political consultant who runs his own consulting firm in Cary, pointed to Hurtado signing onto the pledge in 2020 and said that the “caricature” of him wearing the T-shirt “accurately reflects his public record.”

“With violent crime threatening neighborhoods across the state, I can see why he’d try to distract the public from his record on the issue, but his dishonest smokescreen won’t fool anyone,” Luethy wrote in an email on Monday. “Hopefully he and other “Defund” pledge-signers will change their anti-law enforcement agenda.”

Responding to the main thrust of the mailers, Hurtado said the notion that he was anti-law enforcement “couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“I don’t support defunding the police, and I’ve said that on the record many times,” Hurtado said. “You can look at my voting record and see how I’ve supported bills and sponsored bills to strengthen the workforce and law enforcement. But at the same time, I also think it is important to think about transparency and accountability.”

Hurtado said he has cultivated relationships with local law enforcement, including with police chiefs in Burlington and Mebane. He also said he has cosponsored bills that help police officers, including House Bill 436, which mandated psychological screenings for officers before employment, and aimed to educate officers about maintaining their mental health and using statewide resources available to them; and House Bill 536, which required officers to intervene in and report situations involving excessive use of force.

Both bills passed the General Assembly unanimously and were signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper.

Dispute lingers over pledge by Democratic lawmakers

Hurtado also addressed the pledge he signed, which was cited in the mailer. He said that none of his Democratic colleagues who signed it were pledging to defund the police, and said Republicans who have been attacking Democratic candidates on the issue of police funding were “running on a platform from two years ago, as opposed to actually talking about the issues that matter now.”

The N&O fact-checked GOP claims that the pledge signed by Democrats amounted to support for defunding the police in 2020.

At the time, the pledge’s landing page online called for jobs, affordable quality health care, investing in children, empowering people over special interests, equal opportunity and rights, sustainable infrastructure, resilience and innovation and clean air, water and energy, The N&O reported.

Future Fund Now, the group that organized the pledge and donated money to 11 Democratic state House candidates during the 2020 election cycle (including Hurtado), denied that the pledge had anything to do with separate model policies the group had promoted, which included establishing a commission to “examine police funding in state and provide evidence-based ways to generate savings and increase public safety by reallocating funds toward proven methods to support communities.”

Another model policy promoted by the group, referenced in the mailer sent out against Hurtado’s campaign, would prevent military gear from being allocated to police departments.

“America’s Goals Pledge is not a one-size fits all pledge or an endorsement of a single policy,” Daniel Squadron, the group’s executive director, told The N&O at the time.

Should it be legal to campaign with ‘doctored’ photos?

The renewed attention on political ads featuring altered photos prompted Luethy and other Republicans to point out ads targeting GOP candidates that have been criticized for selectively cropping or altering photos to mislead voters.

Luethy pointed to a mailer claiming that Republican candidate Allen Chesser, a former police officer running to represent Nash County in the N.C. House, wanted to defund the police. Chesser’s campaign took to Facebook to reveal that a photo of him in the mailer had been cropped to not show him shaking hands with a police officer.

And in response to Hurtado’s tweets about the altered photo being used against him, state Sen. Amy Galey, a Republican who also represents Alamance County, said that a photo of Ross at a ribbon-cutting ceremony had been altered during the 2020 election to make it look like he had his own plane.

Moving forward, Hurtado said, more should be done to address false claims being made in political ads.

Hurtado said he would be glad to work with other lawmakers and discuss potential legislation to address the issue, and pointed to a bill proposed by Democratic Rep. Graig Meyer that would try to expedite the consideration of certain lawsuits brought against candidates or campaigns for “false or defamatory” claims.

“Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, no one wants to see attack ads against them that are rooted in lies, that include falsehoods,” Hurtado said. “I think we can actually get behind this in a bipartisan way, to make sure that when we’re running for reelection in the future, that what people see is rooted in fact and people’s records, and not lies.”

Hurtado said he was aware that critics of proposals to legislate speech or the truth of claims being made in political ads express concern over trying to distinguish between speech that is misleading or missing context, and speech that is deliberately false.

But even then, should lawmakers try to limit speech that is false?

“There would be plenty of debate on where you draw that line when it comes to making claims,” Hurtado said. “But I think that something we can probably all agree on, is doctoring documents or photos should be illegal.”

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