ISSUE #8 – I Built Thousands of Houses a Year

“We use to build several, you know, thousand homes a year.”

– Terry McAuliffe, The Politics Hour with Mark Plotkin, Feb. 20, 2009

THE FACTS

From the start of his campaign, Terry McAuliffe has repeated the claim that he “built” well over a thousand homes a year as an investor in American Heritage Homes. The specific number of homes has ranged from “several thousand a year” to “over 1300.”

But then, on May 3, 2009, the Washington Post directly contradicted that claim, highlighting McAuliffe’s tendency to invent numbers in their front page exposé on his business background.

McAuliffe then claimed that his home-building company built 1,300 homes at its peak, but an adviser later clarified that the figure was closer to 800.

-- The Washington Post, McAuliffe’s Background Could Prove a Liability, 5/3/09

That’s right: the source of the corrected number? McAuliffe’s own advisors!

Did that stop Terry from continuing to use the same discredited, false claim? Nope!

“Took over a company that was in receivership, a home-building company there… Built over 1300 homes a year.”

-- Terry McAuliffe, Greenspring Candidates Forum, May 15, 2009

When will Terry McAuliffe decide to tell the truth? To date, the McAuliffe campaign has yet to provide any documentation that supports the claim that even 800 homes had been built by the company.

With a record of exaggerations and dishonesty, when Terry McAuliffe says he’s created thousands of jobs, why should Virginians believe him?