Republican State Rep. Patricia L. Morgan, who is running for U.S. Senate trying to unseat three-term Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, this week called on supporters in an email “to help me defeat Sheldon Whitehouse,” calling his “track-record…dismal.”
In the sweeping statement, she made several allegations that many upon fact checking were found to be either misrepresentations or false. What’sUpNewp intends, to the best of our ability, to fact-check representations made by political candidates, regardless of party affiliation.
Morgan represents District 26 in the House, a district that includes West Warwick, Coventry, and Warwick. She was first elected in 2011 and served through 2018 and was again elected in 2020.
Her legislative biography says she’s a financial advisor, having earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Kent State University and a master’s in education from Rhode Island College.
“Our economy is in shambles,” she says. “Inflation is punishing hardworking folks. Good paying full-time jobs are hard to come by, What is Whitehouse doing? Making it worse. Throwing gasoline on the fire by spending trillions of dollars on his climate agenda.”
Morgan’s email goes on to blame Whitehouse for a wide variety of what she perceives as serious problems in America. Here’s what we found:
- Economy: The National Association for Business Economics says: The “U.S. economic growth projections are stronger for 2023, but panelists expect moderation in 2024,” says NABE President Julia Coronado, founder and president, MacroPolicy Perspectives LLC. “Participants anticipate further slowing in inflation, excluding food and energy costs, but doubt it will reach the Fed’s 2% target before year-end 2024. Still, a majority of the panel indicates interest rate cuts will begin in the first half of 2024. While most respondents expect an uptick in the unemployment rate going forward, few anticipate it will exceed 5%.”
- Morgan: “Our electric rates have exploded 70% since last October.” According to the Public Utilities Commission, Rhode Island Energy’s rate increase, effective in October rose 24 percent since August. An increase in seasonal rates happens annually. According to the PUC rates are comparable to a year ago. The Energy Information Administration says the U.S. residential electricity bills have increased 5% since October 2022. It would appear the 70% to which Morgan refers is the number of consumers officials project are impacted by the rate increase.
- Morgan: “Gasoline for our cars is 40 percent higher.” The average cost of gasoline on Nov. 14, 2023 was reported as $3.377, that’s less than a year ago, when it was reported at $3.811. The Energy Information Administration reports that the average gallon of gasoline in December 2019 was $2.645, about 28 percent.
- Morgan: “Seven million immigrants have entered our country illegally.” She doesn’t specific a time frame, PolitiFact says that a number Florida Gov. DeSantis has used a 7.2 million, but that number does not reflect about 2.5 million expulsions under Title 42 and another nearly 600,00 removals initiated by border authorities.
- Morgan says that “60 percent of retirees count on social security as their only income.” The National Institute on Retirement Security puts that figure at 40 percent.
- She also said that Whitehouse has called for a cease fire in the Israel-Hamas war. A cease fire, she says, “will only allow Hamas to regroup and rearm.” Whitehouse, according to his statements and reports, did not call for a cease fire, but instead called for a humanitarian pause in the fighting.
Morgan also says that families are under attack, with schools withholding information from parents about their children’s mental health, and that “sexualized material is finding its way into elementary school classrooms and libraries.”