IL-10: Is the Kirk campaign stupid, or despicable?

Barack Obama isn't the only one facing the dirtiest of race-baiting attacks this cycle.

Rep. Mark Kirk, locked in the race of his life with Orange to Blue candidate Dan Seals, has already made several highly controversial statements about Democratic candidates this cycle, most notably this one (emphasis added):

DON WADE: In fact, yesterday in a conference call, Barack Obama's advisers were asked, "If Osama bin Laden were caught, should he get to challenge his detention in U.S. courts?" And the advisers said that -- should that right to challenge detention that they get at Gitmo based on the Supreme Court ruling, should that be applied to bin Laden? -- and Obama's advisers said, "Yes."

KIRK: Yeah, and I would much rather have a policy where if we see Obama there's a shoot-on-sight order.

DON WADE: Well, okay. I'm with you, but I don't know whether that's going to make 67 -- well it might --

ROMA: I don't think Osama bin Laden -- no one ever sights him.

Kirk apologized to Senator Obama for the alleged mix-up. But he's back to making underhanded, oh-so-subtle statements about Democrats, this time about Dan Seals himself.

The Kirk campaign is going after Seals for being "unemployed".

"After losing his bid for Congress, Seals did not return to GE Finance and was unemployed," according to a Kirk campaign memo out last week. "Near the end of the 2006 campaign, Seals paid himself $25,000 out of his campaign donor funds — an act that is legal but strongly discouraging to donors ... in May, Seals filed his 2008 financial disclosure with the U.S. House showing only $3,300 in earned income through the first quarter of the year."

Unemployed? Seals has been working as a business consultant and lecturer at Northwestern University.

Most candidates for Congress take at least a leave of absence from work to focus on their campaigns, especially campaigns as hotly contested as this one. This is hardly a secret. Candidates frequently sacrifice promising careers out of a commitment to public service; praise to those who do.

Heaven forbid we actually have candidates for office who put public service ahead of their own personal gain. I understand why that concept may be foreign to Republicans, but still.

Regardless of the stupidity and irrelevance of the quote, it is wildly inaccurate, as the Seals campaign pointed out:

But Seals’ campaign said in a new memo distributed Monday that the incumbent is resorting "to demeaning and untruthful smears" reminiscent of slash-and-burn GOP operative Karl Rove.

"Mark Kirk entirely overlooks the fact that Dan Seals has worked as a business consultant and lecturer at Northwestern since 2006 and that Seals’ wife serves in a senior level corporate position," the Seals campaign memo states. "So the question is, what does Mark Kirk find so objectionable that the Seals family, like many families in the 10th district have two working parents?"

"It is this out-of-touch mentality that has guided Kirk’s votes against economic relief for hard-hit families and also driven Seals to devote himself full-time to campaigning, because now more than ever change is needed in Washington," the memo continues.

So why on earth would the Kirk campaign seek to target Seals as "unemployed", given the fact that it isn't true?

Why would they think that dog would hunt, given Seals' stellar professional and educational resume? In addition to his consulting work and teaching at Northwestern, Seals has worked as an English teacher and Senate aide, worked in marketing at Sprint and GE Finance, and holds degrees from Boston University, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago.

Who do they think they're kidding with the "unemployed" line? Who do they think would buy the idea of Dan Seals as a freeloader?

Please tell me it doesn't have anything to do with Seals being African-American, running in an affluent white district.

Because if it does, Kirk is guilty of engaging in the most shameful and vile brand of politics imaginable.

On the web:
Dan Seals for Congress
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