PolitiFact has weighed in on a dispute that’s been dominating the Iowa Senate race: Republicans supporting state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) claim that Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) went way too far over a disagreement with a neighbor about chickens wandering into his yard and threatened to sue her.
It’s a claim that Ernst herself repeated during the Sunday debate, when she said, “Congressman, you threatened to sue a neighbor over chickens that came onto your property.”
PolitiFact dubbed Ernst’s claim “false” on Thursday.
The backstory is that Braley is said to have gotten into an argument with a neighbor, Pauline Hampton, because the neighbor’s chickens wandered into the yard of his vacation home in Holiday Lake, Iowa. Republicans also claimed that Braley threatened legal action over the chickens.
Carolyn Braley, Braley’s wife, told Hampton that she planned to file a complaint over the chickens with the neighborhood homeowner’s association. The homeowner’s association then ruled that Hampton could keep the chickens as long as they stayed fenced in her yard.
The Iowa Republican website then released emails that showed Braley reached out to the homeowner’s association lawyer. Those emails, Republicans suggested, show that Braley threatened legal action. But PolitiFact noted that the emails “do not say anywhere that Braley was considering a lawsuit.”
“In fact, they say the opposite,” PolitiFact said in its post on Thursday. “The lawyer, Thomas Lacina, writes “The implication from Mr. Braley was that he wants to avoid a ‘litigious situation.'”
Braley himself told The Washington Post that he “just reached out to somebody I knew expecting to get a phone call back and instead this thing blows up.” Hampton herself also told PolitiFact that she never received a threat from Braley to sue her.
In the end, PolitiFact concluded that the claim by the Ernst campaign is “false.”
Similarly, The Washington Post previously checked into the story and noted that Braley, contrary to Republican claims, didn’t sue.
(Photo credit: Youtube)
