A new ad released by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aimed at attacking the Republican candidate in Georgia's sixth congressional district was rated "mostly false" on Wednesday.
PolitiFact rated the ad as "mostly false" due to the DCCC leaving out a significant portion of information when discussing the budget increase that occurred while Republican Karen Handel was Georgia's secretary of state. The ad claimed Handel's "office budget" increased by 42 percent. In reality, the administrative costs did increase by 47 percent between 2007 and 2010, but the total budget for the department decreased by 10 percent over the same time.
A spokesman for the DCCC Evan Lukaske told PolitiFact that the numbers used in the ad came from a 2010 Associated Press story.
The increase in administrative costs is explained by Handel's consolidation of investigators from three separate divisions to one, according to her spokeswoman Kate Constantini.
"That line item was part of the front office budget, which necessarily showed an increase, but was the result of moving personnel that were accounted for in other parts of the budget," Constantini told PolitiFact.