GOP candidates stumble on facts in South Carolina debate

By Shira Schoenberg, Globe Staff

This is one of a series of factchecks the Globe runs on statements by the presidential candidates. The statements below were made at last night’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, speaking about the importance of marriage as a way to prevent poverty, talked about the Best Friends Foundation, a program that provides a curriculum for middle school and high school students to learn self-respect and to avoid things like violence, alcohol and drug use, and pressure to have premarital sex. Santorum said of the program: “But what is the Obama administration doing? Elayne Bennett runs a program called Best Friends. ….The Obama administration now has regulations that tells them that they can no longer promote marriage to these young girls. They can no longer promote marriage as a way of avoiding poverty and bad choices that they make in their life. They can no longer even teach abstinence education.”

In fact, Bennett said that statement is incorrect. The program in question is a five year federal “Healthy Marriage” grant. The grants were instituted by President George W. Bush, and have been continued by Obama, through the Department of Health and Human Services. The grants let organizations address issues such as dating violence and abuse prevention. Bennett said Santorum is correct that the Obama administration in 2009 changed the grant policy, so that Best Friends can no longer use the federal money to teach abstinence, and can no longer discuss sexual activity as a “risk behavior” for teenagers. However, the Obama administration rules did not say that the organization can no longer promote marriage; it can. “Marriage and the benefits of marriage continued to be an integral part of the curriculum,” Bennett said in a statement, which she sent to Santorum.

Santorum and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney got into a back-and-forth over felon voting rights. The exchange came in response to ads from a super PAC supporting Romney that criticized Santorum for voting for a federal law that would have forced states to allow felons to vote after they completed their prisons sentences and any probation and parole.

Santorum told Romney: “In the state of Massachusetts, when you were governor, the law was that not only could violent felons vote after they exhausted their sentences, but they could vote while they were on probation and parole, which was a more liberal position than I took when I voted for the bill.”

Romney responded: “As governor of Massachusetts, I had an 85 percent Democratic legislature. This is something we discussed. My view was people who committed violent crimes should not be able to vote, even upon coming out of office [apparently, referring to prison]… I had a state that -- that said that they did not favor my position.”

Santorum is right that the Massachusetts law is more liberal than the standard he voted for. Massachusetts is one of 13 states that allows felons to vote as soon as they leave prison, even if they remain on probation or parole, according to data collected by the independent non-profit ProCon.org, and by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Another two states let felons vote from prison. The remaining 35 states have laws that are stricter, restricting felon’s voting rights if they are on parole or probation.

The last time the issue came up publicly in Massachusetts was under Governor Paul Cellucci. Until 2000, Massachusetts allowed felons to vote from prison. In response to prisoners attempting to form a political action committee in 1997, Cellucci advocated for a constitutional amendment banning felons from voting from prison. The state Legislature passed the ban 155-45, and voters adopted the amendment, 60 percent to 34 percent. The amendment did not restrict voting by felons after release from prison.

So that law was in place before Romney became governor in 2003. There is no indication Romney made any attempt to change it.

Kevin Peterson, executive director of the New Democracy Coalition, which opposed stripping prisoners of voting rights, said he cannot recall the issue ever coming up under Romney. “Romney inherited the law,” Peterson said. “He didn’t create it. He didn’t do anything to reverse it.”

In response to a question about the growing murder rate of women in Turkey, declining press freedom, and the Turkish prime minister’s embrace of Hamas, Texas Governor Rick Perry was asked whether Turkey still belongs in NATO. Perry responded: “Well, obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it.”

Turkey has been ruled by the Justice and Freedom Party since 2002. The party has Islamic roots, though Turkey’s constitution defines the country as democratic, secular, and parliamentary, according to the US State Department. CNN’s National Security blog said Turkey’s leaders are not “terrorists.” Turkey has been a US ally, leading four NATO peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan since the US invasion in 2001. The Associated Press reported that Turkey recently began hosting an early warning radar system, part of NATO’s missile defense system.

The Perry campaign told ABC that Perry was referring to Turkey’s support for Hamas – considered a terrorist organization by the US – and support for a flotilla that tried to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

According to the US government website on foreign aid, US assistance to Turkey has already dropped in recent years, from $19.8 million in 2007 to just $5.4 million in 2011. Of that, $4 million was for stabilization operations and security sector reform. The rest was for counter-terrorism and combating weapons of mass destruction.