"My father's hands didn't build this company? My hands didn't build this company? My son's hands aren't building this company?" New Hampshire businessman Jack Gilchrist, president of Gilchrist Metal, asks in the ad that's been making waves since last week.
Reporting by The New Hampshire Union Leader disputed this claim by looking into Gilchrist's history, revealing that he took over $1 million in government loans since the 1980s, including $800,000 in tax-exempt bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority to build a new manufacturing plant and buy equipment. Gilchrist also admitted to the paper that he took a U.S. Small Business Administration loan of "somewhere south of" $500,000 in the 1980s, and said that to this day about 10 percent of his business comes from defense-related projects.
