Darcy Burner lied about college degree

Dori writes…

Darcy Burner has been on the campaign trail talking about how her degree in economics from Harvard will help her deal with the financial turmoil in our country. There’s just one problem with that…

She’s been lying.

According to the Seattle Times, in her Oct 10th debate with Dave Reichert, Burner said in her opening statement, “I loved economics so much that I got a degree in it from Harvard”.

But as the Times discovered, Burner doesn’t have an econ degree from Harvard. She took five economics courses at Harvard, but does not have a degree in that field. Her degree is in computer science.

And it wasn’t just a slip at one debate. She made the claim at two debates and, according to the Times: Her campaign Web site biography says: “she buckled down and studied twice as hard at school, while working two or three jobs at time, to get accepted and then put herself through Harvard, where she earned a degree in computer science and economics.”

Burner now says she got the computer science degree with a special emphasis in economics. Harvard’s registrar’s office says her records don’t list the emphasis in econ.

In a hilarious bit of spin: Burner’s spokesman, Sandeep Kaushik, said she claimed to have a degree in economics at the debates because saying she had an emphasis within her computer science degree “doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue.”

This is similar to Burner’s 2006 controversy when she claimed to be a “former Microsoft executive” when that also was not true.

Burner campaign spokesman Sandeep Kaushik reponded to the controversy Thursday afternoon.

Dori interviews Burner’s spokesman