PolitiFact Florida Top 5 in May 2016

Gov. Rick Scott relishes the opportunity to promote Florida and try luring companies away from other states.

In May, the Republican took his job poaching tour to California. His jobs agency, Enterprise Florida, produced a radio ad attacking California, which is led by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, for hiking the minimum wage.

Our fact-check of a claim in the ad about the wage hike was one of our most read fact-checks in May. Other fact-checks that drew in readers focused on claims about the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and by candidates vying to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

Here’s a look at PolitiFact Florida’s most clicked fact-checks in May, counting down to the most popular:

5. U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson: “There’s only three countries in the entire world where there’s no paid vacation by law, we happen to be one of them.”

The other two are in Africa, Grayson said. Grayson’s U.S. Senate campaign spokesman admitted Grayson had misspoken. The congressman had meant to say only a handful of island nations in the Pacific Ocean — not two countries in Africa — joined the United States in not providing paid time off. The United States is certainly one of just a few countries that does not legally guarantee at least some kind of paid vacation, and is an outlier among its economic peers and other developed nations. We rated this claim Half True.

4. Todd Wilcox says “I can tell you that the enhanced interrogation techniques that have since been banned by this administration — specifically waterboarding — work.”

Wilcox, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate, is a former CIA officer. There is no irrefutable evidence that waterboarding provides reliable results, and Wilcox did not provide any. Experts said there are few historical accounts of success, and even those are suspect. Meanwhile, there’s scientific proof that a technique like waterboarding would affect brain function enough to make any prisoner’s statements unreliable. We rated this statement False.

3.  Looking for Jeb Bush’s ‘pledge’ to support Donald Trump

Trump said that Bush signed a “binding pledge” to endorse the party nominee and then broke that pledge. The focus of that pledge was on Trump himself — the Republican National Committee wanted Trump, who had threatened that he might run as an independent, to sign it and he did on Sept. 3.

We couldn’t find evidence that Bush actually had signed the pledge so we did not rate this statement on our Truth-O-Meter. However, election experts told us that the pledge was not a legally binding contract and instead was only a political statement. In fact, Trump himself said on CNN March 29th that he no longer stood by his pledge to support the nominee and said he had to see who it is. See our report here.

2. Ted Cruz says Trump “brings in hundreds of foreign workers to replace Americans.”

Federal labor records show Trump sought visas for hundreds of foreign workers to fill temporary positions at his Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach County in recent years. Hundreds of U.S. applicants either applied or were referred for the jobs, but records show only a handful were hired. There is some debate about whether those applicants were qualified, and there are no public records about how many foreign workers were eventually hired. Cruz made it sound like foreign workers took jobs from Americans already in positions, but that’s not the case. We rated this statement Half True.

1. Florida agency’s misleading attack on California’s minimum wage hike

Enterprise Florida said, “Seven hundred thousand. That’s how many California jobs will be lost thanks to the politicians raising the minimum wage….Now Florida is adding 1 million jobs, not losing them.”

This is misleading. The 700,000 figure refers to the number of jobs California could have added by 2026 if it didn’t increase the minimum wage, not a decline in net employment. Based on projections, California will still gain more jobs with the minimum wage increase than Florida during the same time frame. While experts agreed that a $15 wage will reduce employment in California, they said it’s near impossible to pin a number on the impact given how unprecedented the hike is. We rated the claim Mostly False.

Some of our older items were also popular in May, including our report examining whether Trump inherited $100 million, a fact-check about Trump and disabled veterans, and Bernie Sanders’ claim about the history of free college.

Spot a claim we should fact-check? #PolitiFactThis or truthometer@politifact.com