PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature of the St. Petersburg FL Times, gives Ron Johnson's attack ad on Russ Feingold a "barely true" rating. And that's a stretch. The summary:
Feingold did vote against a bill that included the permanent ban on Great Lakes drilling, and also voted against two of the bills with temporary bans, though for reasons unrelated to the drilling ban provision. As a result, Johnson has some justification for saying that Feingold "voted against the law that protected our lakes."
But the ad ignores that Feingold supported one of the temporary bans, and that he has a long record of protecting the environmental quality of the Great Lakes, including championing at least one bill that dealt directly with drilling. Meanwhile, we don't buy the campaign's rationale for excluding New York from the list of Great Lakes states. That fundamentally undercuts the ad's claim that Feingold was the only Great Lakes senator to vote against the 2005 bill. On balance, we rate the ad Barely True.
Johnson's campaign continues to argue that New York is not included in some lists of Great Lakes states, but here's one that seems pretty definitive: the Great Lakes Commission, of which New York has been a member since the commission was created in 1955:
The purpose of the Commission is to carry out the terms and requirements of the Great Lakes Basin Compact, as noted in Article 1: To promote the orderly, integrated, and comprehensive development, use, and conservation of the water resources of the Great Lakes Basin.
It is the organization that oversees the Great Lakes Compact, in the news in Wisconsin recently because all of the eight member states --including New York -- have to approve any water diversion from the lakes, such as that proposed by some Waukesha County communities.