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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
●KS-02: Any candidate can lie, but it takes a certain Trumpesque brazenness to lie, sorta admit the truth after being confronted about it, then go right back to lying about the same topic like nothing ever happened. Well, Republican Steve Watkins is such a candidate. A few weeks ago, a Kansas City Star investigation led Watkins to admit that he'd never owned or built up the defense contracting company VIAP Inc, despite what he'd said on the campaign trail. That confession came as several senior company officials said they didn't even remember Watkins, who worked as a contractor. The paper also reported that Watkins had joined VIAP years after it started, so he certainly didn't help start it.
Campaign ActionWatkins admitted to the paper that he "didn't own it, no ... when I say I helped start and grow, it was operational." But the paper now reports that on Wednesday, Watkins told a candidate forum that he'd "helped to start and grow an engineering security outfit from three people to 470 people." The campaign later stuck by Watkins' very dubious argument that he again meant he'd helped the company start operationally even though again, it existed years before he joined it.
Watkins went on to hustle out of the event without taking any questions from reporters, which even Wilson County GOP chairman Kris Marple admitted, "Kind of makes you wonder." However, Marple told the Star that he'd be voting for Watkins because "We're just talking two years," and "If we come to find out that stuff's true and he's really not what he says he is, we'll replace him in two years, I guess." With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Well, Watkins has got them, and the DCCC is out with a new spot that hits him on this fabrication. The narrator first tells the audience that, despite Watkins saying he built a company from scratch, "It was all a lie." The narrator also describes how the CEO of VIAP's parent company "didn't even know who Watkins was, saying, 'He's nobody that I've heard of.'" The commercial also highlights how Watkins' primary foes called him a "fraud and a liar."
On the other side, Democrat Paul Davis is up with a new ad that highlights his family's healthcare struggle. The candidate tells the audience that when his daughter Caroline was born she had to have a very costly invasive surgery, "And we had to also battle our insurance company." Davis declares that it's "wrong to say, 'You have this disease and we're not going to allow you to get affordable health insurance.'"