SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — On a weekend dedicated to honoring military service, Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk has acknowledged he claimed he was named the U.S. Navy’s intelligence officer of the year, an award he never won.
The Republican’s disclosure comes at a time when politicians face heightened scrutiny of their military records, thanks to a Connecticut Democrat who wrongly said he had served in Vietnam.
Kirk, who is in a tough race for President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, said in a statement the award was misidentified in his official biography. He said he would correct the biography to show that it was his unit, not him personally, that won the 1999 award.
Kirk, a five-term congressman, said his leadership helped the unit earn the honor and that he remains proud of his service. His incorrect claim has been repeated frequently. Both his campaign website and his official congressional site have been updated, but they previously said he was intelligence officer of the year.
A spokesman said earlier this year that Kirk won the award, and news reports using that description date back at least to 2003.
His Democratic opponent, Illinois state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, suggested Kirk was intentionally inflating his credentials.
Kirk’s responses to the issue “raise even more questions than they answer about a troubling pattern from a typical Washington politician,” Giannoulias spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said Sunday.
Kirk’s campaign criticized The Washington Post story that first revealed he hadn’t won the award. The newspaper said it began asking questions after receiving complaints from a Giannoulias representative.
“We knew Alexi Giannoulias was desperate. We just didn’t know he was this desperate,” Kirk spokesman Eric Elk said.
Giannoulias has had his own political troubles since the shuttering of his family’s bank, where he once worked. Republicans have tried to capitalize on that failure because winning the seat would be a plum election prize that they’ve long counted on Kirk to bring home.
Republicans held the seat for six years before Obama won it in 2004. Sen. Roland Burris, who was appointed to Obama’s seat by the scandal-plagued former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, opted not to run for a full term.
The admission that Kirk had overstated his record came just two weeks after a national furor over Connecticut’s Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, who incorrectly said he had served in Vietnam. Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, served in the Marine Reserves during the Vietnam War but never left the United States.
