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In March, the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates faced off at separate debates in Miami before Florida’s March 15 primary.
Donald Trump won the GOP primary -- prompting Marco Rubio to suspend his campaign -- while on the Democratic side Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida also drew attention for her role as Democratic National Committee chair and because she is facing a primary opponent for the first time in a decade.
Here’s a look at the most clicked on new fact-checks in March counting down to the most popular:
Her campaign committee and PAC have taken $309,020 from commercial banks since 2006. The payday loan bill hasn’t had a vote in the House yet, although Wasserman Schultz is a co-sponsor. The bill would not prevent the bureau from regulating payday loans entirely, but it would cede power to the states, including Florida, which has its own payday law that some advocates have criticized as weak. She also voted for a bill that squashed bureau guidelines that were intended to provide clarity about the law on racial discrimination related to car loans. We rated his statement Mostly True.
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4. Did Donald Trump inherit $100 million?
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said at the Detroit debate that Trump "inherited over $100 million." Trump did inherit money, but we could find no independent way to confirm the amount, so we wrote an article and did not rate the statement on the Truth-O-Meter. When Trump’s father died in 1999, news reports put the value of his estate between $100 million and $300 million. But multiple relatives stood to inherit, and it’s unclear how much Trump himself inherited. Rubio however, had a point that Trump wasn’t a self-made man and benefited from his father’s wealth over the the years.
In September 2007, Spitzer proposed giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants in New York. Clinton waffled on his proposal in a debate in October 2007. When Spitzer dropped his proposal, she came out with a statement supporting his decision to ax the plan to give the driver’s licenses. But during this campaign she has supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants -- a caveat that Sanders omitted. We rated his statement Mostly True
Trump won 66 counties, but it’s far from unprecedented for Florida primary winners to win by a huge margin. Going back even just a few decades, there are several instances of candidates winning all 67 counties, including Democrat John Kerry in 2004, Vice President Al Gore in 2000, and Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000. We rated Trump’s statement Pants On Fire!
The first election where Democrats used superdelegates was in 1984, where they helped Walter Mondale secure the nomination on the first ballot at the convention. It’s not clear that they were the "determining" factor. Some say Mondale would have won without them. Since that time, a Democrat has won the nomination early enough so that the superdelegates haven’t mattered. We rated this claim Mostly True.
Some older articles were also popular in March including Clinton’s Full Flop on Cuba embargo and Trump’s misleading claim about Mexico being able to pay for the wall as a result of the trade deficit.
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