Ad check: Both parties tweak the facts in new online claims in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race

Aug. 22--The latest from both parties in the nationally watched race for Missouri's U.S. Senate seat, still about 15 months off:

--National Democrats, preparing to defend incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., have released a series of three online "bumper ads" going after three of her potential Republican challengers for supporting the GOP's attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare."

The six-second ads, part of "an ongoing six-figure digital buy" from the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, are designed to pop up in sequence as people flip through web sites. They are in the form of text-message conversation between a mother and (apparent) young-adult offspring, about medical care for some kind of injury.

They don't have insurance. "It's going to be $$$$$," says the kid. "Why is it so expensive?"

"Next time," responds the mother, "text Paul Curtman, Josh Hawley and Austin Petersen. They'd spike your costs."

Curtman is a state representative from Franklin County; Hawley is Missouri's attorney general; Petersen, of Kansas City, ran for president last year as a Libertarian. They are among announced or potential candidates vying for the GOP Senate nomination in the August 2017 primary.

The ad doesn't specify how those candidates would "spike your costs" for health care, but they have supported the concept of repealing Obamacare. A common Democratic criticism of the Republican attempt in Congress to repeal Obamacare was that it would increase health care costs for many Americans -- though Republicans maintain that Obamacare itself has increased insurance costs.

--National Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to revive a controversy from 2011, when it came out that McCaskill had charged taxpayers for flights in a private plane she owned with her husband and that she'd failed to pay almost $300,000 in personal property taxes on it. She ultimately rectified both situations (and sold the "damned plane," as she called it at the time), but that wasn't enough to avoid creation of the nickname "Air Claire."

The Republican National Committee has released a video of a recent town hall meeting in which the subject of private planes again comes up. In emailed materials to reporters, the GOP claims the video shows McCaskill "saying that 'normal people' can afford to own and operate private jets."

But the full conversation in the video doesn't indicate that's what she was saying. In context, she seems to be talking about buying not planes, but plane tickets, while attempting a joke about the earlier controversy.

The video shows McCaskill reacting to an audience member, who noted that in America, a "normal person" can afford to fly. "Will you remind [people of] that when they come after me about my husband's plane? That normal people can afford it?" McCaskill responded.

The general election is Nov. 6, 2018.

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