Republican Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk is more than willing to play dirty to keep his very endangered Senate seat against his Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth. That means going after the Iraq war hero, who lost both her legs, for her work in the Illinois and U.S. Veterans Affairs departments. He launched an online ad this week featuring a discrimination lawsuit brought by two Illinois VA employees against Duckworth—a suit that's already been dismissed, twice. It's a controversial move, even among his own supporters.
Garrett Anderson, who lost part of one arm and suffered traumatic brain injury in a roadside-bomb attack in Iraq, said Duckworth was the first service member the U.S. Army sniper spoke to when he woke up from a coma at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2005.
The 39-year-old University of Illinois graduate student plans to vote for Kirk this fall for a simple reason: Anderson is a Republican. But he said the ads targeting her are out of bounds and called Duckworth "a nice person" who has a strong track record of looking out for veterans.
"I've seen a few of (the ads) and I don't like them because she served her country very well, and she's a decorated war veteran," Anderson said. […]
[Duckworth's] Deputy campaign manager Matt McGrath called it "a cynical and desperate ploy." He said Duckworth gets most of her own health care at Hines [VA medical center] and is "deeply familiar" with issues at VA medical centers.
Kirk is desperate, and is going after Duckworth on her biggest strength: Her service in the military and after the war, her service to veterans. It's not going over well with veterans or the political action committee VoteVets, which promises "to spend significant money to attack Kirk." He'll richly deserve every dollar spent against him.
Please donate $3 to help Tammy Duckworth turn the Senate blue.