Kirk's Senate campaign troubled by embellishment - Resume suffers credibility problems

Kirk's Senate campaign troubled by embellishment - Resume suffers credibility problems
By Bob Secter and Todd Lighty
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
7:25 p.m. CDT, October 19, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-senate-kirk-profile-20101019,0,4701537,full.story


U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk fashions himself in the congressional vanguard of the battle against special interest spending, time and again boasting of how he led the successful charge to stop Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere."

"It was the Kirk amendment in the House Appropriations Committee that killed the bridge to nowhere, which thankfully will never be built and your tax dollars were not wasted on that," the Highland Park Republican told the City Club of Chicago in May.

Not exactly.

Kirk exaggerated his role in the bridge's demise, illustrating a proclivity for embellishment that appears to go beyond run-of-the-mill political puffery. The U.S. Senate contest with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias is the first statewide campaign for the five-term congressman, and the increased exposure and scrutiny have introduced Illinois voters to two Mark Kirks.

There is the workaholic policy wonk, a Republican fixture on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, who is never more comfortable than when wielding a chart that highlights the trajectory of deficit spending. His style draws rave reviews from conservative intellectuals such as David Brooks, who gushed over Kirk in a New York Times op-ed column last week.

"I'm an independent," Kirk said in explaining his appeal during a Tribune interview. "A fiscal conservative, a social moderate, a legislator who knows his own mind and prefers, most importantly, to be graded by the results that he delivers for his district and, hopefully, for his state."

Then there is the Mark Kirk who often sounds like a renaissance man when speaking on the House floor and campaign trail, boasting of a resume so accomplished that it seems almost too good to be true — and often is.

To hear the 51-year-old Kirk tell it, he has been at times in his life a "young researcher" for the American Hospital Association; a teacher grappling with societal whirlwinds that can turn students into "people who might bring a gun to class"; an "officer" of a major international development fund; even an alum of a large Mexican university.

But there are problems with that self-portrait.

The researcher post was a summer job during college with the trade group his mother worked for, and consisted largely of him punching government statistical reports into computers.

His teaching experience was confined to a few months assisting at a nursery school while attending Cornell University and another brief stint at a private prep school in London after postgraduate studies there.

Kirk did work at the Washington-based International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank, where his title wasn't "officer," but the less lofty "information officer." Bank records show that he spent fewer than seven months on the payroll in 1990 and 1991.

As for those Mexican studies, they lasted but a semester and were part of a study-abroad program Kirk took part in while enrolled at tiny Blackburn College in downstate Carlinville. Even so, when speaking to that same City Club audience in May, Kirk proclaimed himself the Mexican school's "only alumni (sic) in the Congress."

And the bridge to nowhere? Kirk did oppose the plan to build a bridge to a sparsely populated Alaskan island, but only after first voting for pork-saturated bills that designated tens of millions of dollars to the project. His anti-bridge amendment didn't become law. The plug was pulled in 2007 by then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Questions about resume boosting have dogged Kirk since early in the campaign. The longtime Navy Reserve officer has apologized for inflating parts of his military record, including claims he came under enemy fire in Iraq, that he ran the Pentagon war room and that he was the Navy's intelligence officer of the year.

A Tribune report also called into question dramatic details of Kirk's sailboat accident when he was a teenager, which he cites as a life-altering experience that inspired him to a career in public service.

Hyperbole is no stranger to politics, but even by that standard Kirk's frequent buffing of his personal story is puzzling. He has spent his entire adult life in and around the halls of power in Washington, building up a solid political and policy resume that needs no extra shine.

Kirk was born in Champaign in 1959, but his family moved to the Chicago area when he was a toddler and landed for good in Kenilworth by the time he hit 5th grade. By all accounts, Kirk was a studious kid.

"In the eighth grade, they said I was most likely to be a librarian," he said.

He excelled at geography bees and started an extensive political button collection. Fascinated with outer space, he spent lunch hours huddled with pals in the rudimentary computer room at New Trier East High School, playing a program that simulated a lunar landing.

Robin Kirk, his younger sister, said he also developed a great interest in the history of military combat, cluttering the family basement for weeks on end with elaborate games that simulated Napoleon's campaign in Europe or the War of 1812.

At Blackburn, Kirk was a physics major, but he switched to history after transferring to Cornell, then did graduate work in international relations at the London School of Economics.

Back in the states, he parlayed an internship with his north suburban congressman, Republican John Porter, into a full-time position in which he quickly rose to chief of staff. Simultaneously, he earned his law degree at Georgetown University at night and joined the Navy Reserve, serving as an intelligence officer.

"Mark was very hard working, very intelligent and very ambitious," recalled Porter, now a Washington lawyer. "He seemed to be a young man who knew where he was going and what he was going to do. That impressed me a lot."

Kirk left Porter's staff in 1990 for the World Bank and a series of other positions, including stints at the State Department and on the Republican staff of the House International Relations Committee. Then in 2000, Porter retired and Kirk was elected to replace him.

For most of his five terms in the House, Kirk crafted a reputation as one of a vanishing breed of moderate Republicans. He earned plaudits from environmentalists and gun control advocates. He also honed a reputation as a vocal supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while pushing efforts to supply Israel with the latest in defense technology.

This election year he is, by a wide margin, the largest recipient in Congress of campaign cash from pro-Israeli interest groups, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political funding sources.

Kirk's readiness to buck Republican orthodoxy has subsided with his bid for the Senate.

He has backed off previous support for climate change legislation amid strong opposition from conservatives, praised the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Chicago's handgun ban, and publicly supported a $26 billion Obama administration measure to combat teacher layoffs — only to vote "no" the next day.

Kirk has said he changed positions on the climate change bill to reflect the interests of voters beyond his congressional district, and that, after studying the teacher layoffs bill, he decided it was too expensive.

For the Senate campaign, Kirk has portrayed himself as a deficit hawk, emphasizing a decision in 2008 to swear off the popular practice in Congress of trying to secure millions of dollars in narrow-interest pork-barrel "earmarks" for pet projects back home.

At the same time, he counts local pet projects among his list of top accomplishments in office: blocking the planned closing of the Veterans Affairs hospital in North Chicago, funneling federal money to expand Metra's North Central Line, and pushing for a cleanup of polluted Waukegan Harbor.

As it happens, current cleanup efforts at the harbor are being bankrolled with $18.5 million from the Obama administration's economic stimulus program — a recovery plan Kirk opposed.

Kirk's service on the appropriations committee extends back to the years when Republicans controlled the House.

"I have passed over 30 pieces of legislation as a member of the key appropriations committee, including measures to fight gangs and protect kids online," Kirk said during a debate in 2006 when he was running for his fourth House term.

A list provided by Kirk's Senate campaign to back up that claim illustrates how highly nuanced it was. Kirk used his position to help shape or tweak legislation through amendments, but he has never been the primary author of a measure that passed both the House and Senate and landed on the president's desk.

Kirk has suggested questions about his resume have unfortunately dominated coverage of the campaign.

"Beyond Alexi's attack on my resume and my attack on his resume, the critical mission of a senator is to vote." Kirk said recently in an appearance before the Tribune editorial board. "The question before the people of Illinois is, how will this senator vote?"

bsecter@tribune.com

tlighty@tribune.com