On March 24, 2012, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported:
Josh Mandel’s already casual relationship with the truth took a turn toward outright estrangement this month.
[…]
For the Mandel campaign, the rebuke from the fact-checking arm of The Plain Dealer was just another day at the office. Mandel has received three of PolitiFact Ohio’s seven most recent Pants on Fire rulings. Of his 14 statements evaluated on the Truth-O-Meter since 2010, six have been deemed Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.
[…]
Others back down or soften their rhetoric once their statements have been publicly scrutinized, but Mandel doubles down. Consider his response in an interview last week when asked again to identify a single Ohio job that went to China because of a decisive vote by Brown.
“If that’s the level of specificity you’re looking for, you’re the reporters — you go do the grunt work,” said Mandel, who lives in Beachwood. “Any reporter who doesn’t believe Sherrod Brown is responsible for jobs going to China is simply out of touch.”
PolitiFact Ohio already had done the “grunt work” and found that the examples cited by Mandel’s campaign failed to back up his claim, hence the Pants on Fire rating. Right or wrong, Mandel vowed to repeat the assertion “again and again” and said he sees no downside.
Read the full article here.
Published: Mar 25, 2012 | Last Modified: Apr 21, 2021