A Rolling Stone profile published more than six weeks ago has a factual error related to Iowa. (Fake news in Rolling Stone — whodathunkit?)
In the article “Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBTQ Rights Movement,” about multimillionaire (and Quark founder) Tim Gill, there is this passage, repeated below in both text and screenshot for posterity:
In 2006, its first election year, Gill Action defeated 50 of the 70 candidates it targeted, including the Republican speaker of Iowa’s House of Representatives.
In 2006, the Republican speaker of Iowa’s House of Representatives was Christopher Rants of Sioux City. Rants won re-election unopposed. (The Democratic candidate dropped out between the primary and the general.) He lost the speaker’s gavel for the 2007-08 session because Democrats took the majority in the Iowa House, and served as minority leader instead. The article, however, makes it appear that Rants was one of 50 candidates defeated with help from Gill’s PAC.
I e-mailed the editors on the contact page two weeks ago and heard nothing, and the passage is still there.