New Hampshire Democrats’ ad omits context about Kelly Ayotte, corporate boards

In New Hampshire’s nip-and-tuck gubernatorial race, the state Democratic Party attacked Republican nominee Kelly Ayotte over corporate board positions she held after losing reelection to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

In a September ad backing the Democratic nominee, former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, the New Hampshire Democratic party said Ayotte served on company boards that laid off thousands of U.S. workers. (The ad says Craig authorized the party's ad.)

Ayotte "sat on corporate boards where they bought up companies, gutted them and then pocketed the profits," the ad said. "Under Ayotte, they laid off 18,000 workers at one company. At another, they laid off 1,200 American workers, moving jobs overseas. All while Ayotte raked in $2.5 million."

When contacted for comment, the Ayotte campaign did not dispute the $2.5 million compensation figure. Here, we’ll focus on the ad’s claims about layoffs.

The New Hampshire Democratic Party provided PolitiFact with evidence to support both layoff numbers, but in both cases, the numbers omit important context.

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PolitiFact and WMUR-TV are partnering to fact-check claims in the 2024 New Hampshire gubernatorial race.

Ayotte served on the board for Blackstone, an investment company that had a joint venture with hospitality company MGM Resorts International, which laid off 18,000 workers in 2020. 

Two points undercut the ad’s attack.

First, this wasn’t a case of a company cutting costs routinely or experiencing management problems. The layoffs occurred in August 2020, when MGM was reeling from major travel declines because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Second, blaming Ayotte or Blackstone Inc. for this decision isn’t accurate.

In January 2020, shortly before the pandemic reached the United States, Blackstone said its real estate division had established the joint venture with MGM Resorts to take control of MGM’s real estate assets on the Las Vegas Strip, including the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay hotel-casinos. 

In its announcement, Blackstone said MGM Resorts would continue managing the hotel-casinos’ day-to-day operations under the lease agreements, as the company had previously done with another Las Vegas hotel-casino, the Bellagio. MGM would pay Blackstone, the real estate owner, to lease back the properties.

In essence, Blackstone became the properties’ landlord. But it did not manage the hotel-casinos’ staffing..

The ad also only tells part of the story about heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar, for which Ayotte served as board member from 2017 to 2023.

Caterpillar did lay off 1,200 workers, as paperwork filed with the U.S. government shows. This paperwork lets laid-off workers qualify for benefits under the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which helps people who have lost jobs because of foreign competition.

Between 2017 and 2020, Caterpillar’s federal paperwork filed for the layoffs cited disruptions such as declining in sales, rival competition and a shift of production to locations outside of the U.S. In the filings, the company said some of the U.S. workers’ duties were shifted to Belgium, Brazil, China, India, Ireland and Mexico.

The ad ignores that overall, the company added U.S. jobs during Ayotte’s board tenure. Based on annual reports filed by the company, Caterpillar added 8,600 U.S. jobs during Ayotte’s board service, offsetting the loss of 1,200 lost jobs the ad mentioned.

A New Hampshire Democratic Party ad said that when Ayotte was serving on corporate boards, one company "laid off 18,000 workers" and another "laid off 1,200 American workers, moving jobs overseas."

Ayotte served on the company board of Blackstone, which had a joint venture with MGM Resorts when MGM laid off 18,000 workers as the  COVID-19 pandemic hit and travel slowed dramatically. But Blackstone served as MGM’s landlord; it did not operate the company or dictate its layoffs.

Another company for which Ayotte served as a board member, Caterpillar, laid off 1,200 U.S. workers during her tenure, and many of the jobs moved outside the United States. However, the ad ignores that Caterpillar’s U.S. employment increased overall by 8,600 jobs during Ayotte’s board tenure.

The statement is partially accurate but takes things out of context. We rate it Half True.