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“Congress.org, that was referred to by Mayor Hannemann, is a Republican-front organization that rates me in the same category as Senator Daniel Inouye.”

That’s what former congressman Neil Abercrombie said during a televised gubernatorial debate on KHNL Monday night.

Abercrombie was defending his record in Congress against claims made by former Mayor Mufi Hannemann‘s campaign in a radio advertisement released in early August. The ad said: “The non-partisan group Congress.org rates the performance of national legislators using a scale from 0 to 100. How did Abercrombie rate? Neil got a 16.3. Among those who had been in Congress as long as him, Neil was dead last.”

Civil Beat reported on the ad Aug. 6.

For the purposes of our fact check, we will look at both claims in Abercrombie’s statement: First, whether or not congress.org really is a “Republican front organization” and second, whether he was actually rated in the same category as Sen. Inouye.

Congress.org defines itself as “a nonpartisan news and information Web site devoted to encouraging civic participation.” It is a project of the , which bills itself as “the premier political news and information provider covering Capitol Hill.

CQ-Roll Call affiliates, and power the congress.org software. Both groups are said to be “private, nonpartisan companies that specialize in facilitating civic involvement.”

But at least one website has checked into the impartiality of congress.org.

While not going so far as to claim any misconduct on how the website generates its “Power Rankings,” a 2005 article published by the points out that, “Back in January, Washington Technology magazine revealed that Knowlegis, the outfit that runs Congress.org, was a new company that had just been launched to help “government relations professionals” — i.e. lobbyists — “manage their contacts with Capitol Hill.” The parent company of Knowlegis is Capitol Advantage, described last year in CJR as “the country’s largest email lobbying firm” and “the McDonald’s of grassroots public opinion: massive, mechanized, and a little synthetic.”

Still, that isn’t evidence that one can legitimately label congress.org a “Republican front organization.”

Strangely, after bashing the website, Abercrombie went on in the debate to accept its findings and indeed, seemed pleased with them.

“So if Mayor Hannemann wants to say that Dan Inouye and I are in the same league, I’ll be very happy to accept that,” Abercrombie said.

But, Civil Beat could find no evidence that he and Inouye were, in fact, rated in the same category.

When you look at the “Power Rankings” on congress.org, it offers four different categories to search by: Position, Influence, Legislation and Earmarks.

In each of these, Abercrombie scored 27.93 (rank 213), 0.88 (rank 213), 3.0 (rank 213) and 0.98 (rank 26), respectively. These rankings compared Abercrombie to other members of the U.S. House.

Sen. Inouye was ranked by the same categories, but against other senators, not representatives.

What Abercrombie was specifically referring to is unknown, but from our research, he appears wrong here, too.