The three candidates for governor – incumbent Republican Gov. Paul LePage, Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud and independent Eliot Cutler – rehashed some old claims from their first debate and made a few new ones during a forum held Thursday at Thomas College in Waterville.

As with Wednesday’s debate in Portland, the candidates’ claims were largely accurate, but some context is needed.

A couple of claims strayed further from the truth.

The Portland Press Herald checked a few of the statements to determine how they line up with the facts.

1. Cutler, discussing the state’s potential for foreign investment and tourism, said, “There are (1.3 billion) Chinese. They’ve never seen a moose, or seen the North Woods, our rivers, our ocean.”

First, Cutler gets credit for nailing the population of China, which according to the Central Intelligence Agency, was 1,355,692,576 from an estimate taken in July.

However, his claim that no Chinese national has ever seen a moose, the North Woods, our rivers or the Atlantic Ocean, seems highly unlikely.

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, 1.8 million Chinese nationals visited the United States in 2013 and spent $9.8 billion here. The commerce data doesn’t break out Maine as a top destination, but it does show that national parks, such as Acadia National Park, are popular travel sites. If Chinese tourists have made it to Acadia it is likely they saw the Atlantic Ocean and at least one river since one of the few routes to Acadia traverses the Penobscot.

As for seeing a moose or the North Woods? It’s technically possible that Cutler is correct since both sites may require venturing off well-worn tourist routes.

Finally – and it’s likely that Cutler knows this since he lived there – the Chinese don’t need to visit Maine to see a moose. There are beasts in Mongolia known as the Ussurian, Amur or Manchurian moose, although it’s likely that many Chinese have not seen them.

2. On Wednesday, LePage claimed that he’d been confronted by a man who complained that the governor’s policies had limited his access to welfare benefits, including food stamps. The governor then told the audience, “I said, ‘take this card. Call me in the morning and we’ll get you a job.’ Last Friday, he sent me an email. Thank you Gov. LePage for helping me find a job.”

On Thursday, LePage’s anecdote changed. He said, “We now have him in the system to get a job.” The statement implies that the man doesn’t have a job, but is perhaps enrolled in a welfare-to-work or job training program.

Brent Littlefield, the governor’s political adviser, did not respond to a request to clarify the governor’s comments or name the man.

3. Cutler on LePage boasting that he’s created 22,000 jobs: “That’s like the manager of the Red Sox saying that he’s proud of the fact they won 71 games this year. But they also lost 91 and they finished 25 games back in the cellar of the American League East. We’re doing about as well as the Red Sox.”

It is absolutely correct that the Red Sox won 71 games, lost 91 and finished 25 games behind in the American League East.

We’ll pause here for a moment of silence …

Cutler’s overall point – that Maine lags in job growth and personal-income growth since LePage took office – is also mostly correct.

Maine had the smallest rate of growth in real personal income among 49 states from 2011 to 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Maine showed growth of 0.3 percent in that period, to $38,516 in real per capita personal income.

The 0.3 percent gain in Maine was the lowest growth rate among states showing improvements in income.

4. Michaud, on the economic impact of raising the minimum wage: “Thirteen states raised the minimum wage earlier this year and what we’ve seen in those states is they’ve had faster job growth than those states that did not raise the minimum wage. It goes without saying that if employees make more money, they will spend more money in their local businesses.”

The trick with this claim is proving the direct correlation between raising the minimum wage and job growth. It’s correct that the 13 states that increased the minimum wage this year saw faster job growth than those that didn’t.

But is raising the minimum wage the reason? That’s unclear.

The data comes straight from the U.S. Department of Labor and has been touted by U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, an appointee of President Barack Obama – also an advocate for increasing the minimum wage.

The job growth in 13 states also clashes with a February report by the Congressional Budget Office that estimated that raising the federal minimum wage would result in as many as 500,000 lost jobs.

Nonetheless, many economists, including seven Nobel prize recipients, say the experience in the 13 states is legitimate. Earlier this year more than 100 of them signed a letter to congressional leaders to support the increase.

5. Michaud is skeptical of an east-west highway because of eminent domain concerns, but he would support an east-west railway. Additionally, he said that he would use Maine’s 133rd Engineer Battalion of the Army National Guard as a training program to help build the railway. LePage claimed that it was illegal to do so, to which Michaud later countered that the battalion in 2000 had helped build the Maine State Police barracks in Houlton.

It appears that Michaud is correct that the 133rd was used to help build the Houlton barracks. However, his ability to use the battalion for a rail project will require authorization by the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C. That doesn’t mean he can’t do it, but it may take some time to navigate the federal bureaucracy.

6. LePage said that the state needs to lower energy costs, a familiar refrain. However, he said that the Legislature “has been beating us up every time and will not lower energy costs.”

That claim is, at best, subjective. If the governor is referring to his four attempts to amend the state’s renewable energy law to allow Maine to accept renewable hydropower from Quebec, he’s correct. His proposals were overwhelmingly rejected along bipartisan lines amid concerns that changing the law would hobble the state’s renewable energy industry. Studies have shown renewables are among the industries with the biggest potential for economic growth in Maine.

However, it was the Legislature that created and overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan omnibus energy bill that paved the way for natural gas expansion – a key to lower prices for energy and electricity.

LePage originally vetoed that bill after insisting that lawmakers include a provision to reopen the bidding process for an offshore wind energy grant. The Legislature created a separate bill to satisfy the governor and he then encouraged the Senate to override his veto, which it did. In a subsequently published story, The Associated Press reported that the LePage administration later used the provision to derail a Norwegian company’s multimillion-dollar agreement with the state for an offshore wind project.