WASHINGTON – On Sunday, Sen. Mark Kirk R-Ill., will climb a portion of the indoor staircase of the Willis Tower, the tallest building in Chicago.
It’s a deeply symbolic event for Kirk, occurring a few days before Tuesday’s election.
Kirk’s now annual Willis Tower stair climb is a testament to the progress he has made recovering from a massive stroke that kept him out of the Senate for almost a full year.
The stair climb also vividly represents the uphill battle Kirk has been waging from the start for a second term. Rival U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth is poised to defeat him on Tuesday.
Even before Chicago native Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, Illinois was seen as a heavily Democratic state in a presidential year.
Kirk headed into this election cycle with political oddsmakers not betting on him. When it came to raising campaign cash, that made it harder for Kirk and easier for Duckworth.
Even before Duckworth won her Democratic primary last March, the Democratic Senate political operation made Duckworth a priority, a sore point with Andrea Zopp, Duckworth’s chief primary rival.
At the same time, the GOP Senate political shop put saving Kirk near the bottom of its list.
The Illinois Senate contest features two disabled major contenders from the Chicago suburbs — they both use canes and wheelchairs — who have made part of their “brand” their military experience and work on veterans issues.
Kirk and Duckworth, in an effort to control their message, conducted campaigns that were designed to be difficult for Chicago media to cover. Both teams declined to issue, on a routine basis, campaign schedules.
Overshadowing everything, however, was the emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee. Both candidates, even Kirk the Republican, have stressed Trump isn’t fit to be president.
“This is an unprecedented election with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket and it has created just a lot of challenges,” Kirk campaign manager Kevin Artl said. “And more so that it just focused so much attention on the presidential race and hasn’t really allowed for a greater and wider issue debate among Kirk and Duckworth.
“And I think it was outside of our control, but we would have liked to have had a greater debate on issues like trade, like taxes, like spending and kind of have more of a conversation along those lines with voters, as opposed to reacting to everything that Trump or Clinton had to say,” Artl said.
The Kirk story
“I will always call it like I see it,” Kirk said in his closing remarks at the last Senate debate on Friday night, televised from the ABC7 Chicago studio in the Loop.
He called himself “a man who has always been completely independent of his party.”
Indeed, that independent label has been Kirk’s calling card through his congressional career, which started in 2000 when he was elected to the first of five House terms from the north suburban 10th Congressional District.
Kirk, 57, a Highland Park resident, was elected to the Senate in 2010 in a big Republican year where he faced Democratic Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who brought a lot of baggage to the race. Kirk won narrowly, with 48 percent of the vote, to 46.4 percent for Giannoulias.
Kirk filled the small unexpired portion of President Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate term as well as his full six-year term.
On Jan. 21, 2012, Kirk suffered a stroke to his right brain. He returned to the Capitol on Jan. 4, 2013, with all his Senate colleagues and Vice President Joe Biden on hand as he climbed the steps leading to the Senate chamber. The stroke left Kirk blind in his left eye. He also has no use of one arm, limited function in one leg and impaired speech.
No matter what happens on Tuesday, Kirk will be known as the Republican who backed abortion rights, legislation to curb gun violence, supported gay marriage and a variety of anti-discrimination measures impacting the LGBTQ and human rights communities. A retired Navy Reserve officer, Kirk is a leading Senate voice against the Iran nuclear deal.
Kirk earned headlines when he became the first Republican to buck his GOP Senate leaders and meet with and call for a hearing on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland (who grew up in Lincolnwood). He also garnered attention when he pulled his support for Trump and said Trump should quit the race in the wake of sexual misconduct questions.
Kirk has also been gaffe prone.
“Shows he’s not a scripted robot,” Artl said. And each time, “he’s apologized.”
Kirk’s campaign has been hit with setbacks.
The Chicago Tribune declined to endorse Kirk, deciding that the stroke left him unable “to perform to the fullest” as senator. Kirk’s team called it a cheap shot.
Kirk also made a major gaffe when he debated Duckworth on Oct. 26 at the University of Illinois in Springfield.
After Duckworth talked about how her family has military roots “back to the Revolution,” Kirk shot back, “I’ve forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”
As a result, two groups — organizations focusing on gay rights and curbing gun violence — yanked Kirk endorsements.
The Duckworth story
When Kirk made his crack, “I remember thinking, ‘I am not going to dignify this with an answer,’” Duckworth told the Sun-Times. “And I am not going to be ashamed of my mother and the fact she is an immigrant.
“. . . It took me a second to realize what he said and then I just decided, ‘I’m going to take a drink of water and let it pass,”’ said Duckworth. Her mother is from Thailand. Her father was born in Maryland.
Duckworth, 48, a Hoffman Estates resident, was elected to the House in 2012, almost eight years to the November 2004 day when her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq. She lost her legs and some of the use of an arm.
The Illinois Army National Guard member met Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., while she was recovering in a military hospital in Washington. That eventually led her to an ill-fated House run in 2006. Among those helping that bid was then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
After that, Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed her director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, a post she held until Obama appointed her to a top spot in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. She won the northwest suburban 8th Congressional District seat in 2012.
While Duckworth suffered a massive trauma, she is otherwise physically fit, according to medical records she released. Duckworth became a mother at the age of 46 with the cesarean section birth of Abigail in 2014.
As for the Senate run, “I knew very early on I was going to run a very disciplined campaign,” Duckworth said.
Bill Hyers, Duckworth’s political consultant, told the Sun-Times: “This race got put away early because she was disciplined in raising money, she was disciplined in campaigning and staying on message, she has a dynamic personal story and in a favorable year, she had all the fundamentals and she executed them flawlessly.”
Throughout the campaign, a main thrust of Kirk’s team has been to attack Duckworth over her record as the Illinois Veterans Affairs chief.
One of Kirk’s sustained attacks against Duckworth was a civil lawsuit filed by two female VA employees who asserted Duckworth retaliated against them for whistleblowing.
The lawsuit fizzled. Kirk could not gain traction accusing Duckworth, a wounded Iraq war vet herself, of not caring for vets.
“They decided, wrongly,” said Hyers, “to put all their eggs in the basket of those so-called whistleblowers.”
The Zopp/Duckworth primary became contentious; Zopp and her backers said the Democratic Illinois ticket needed an African-American on it. But it “helped” Duckworth, Hyers said.
It was like a “test run,” Hyers said, to find out, “is your stuff working or not?”
On the money
Duckworth has been significantly out-raising Kirk — so much so that third-party independent expenditure money has not played an outsized role in the Illinois Senate race.
According to Federal Election Commission records, between March, 2015 and Oct. 19, Duckworth’s receipts totaled $15,111,231.
Kirk raised $8,273,448 between January, 2015 and Oct. 19, according to his FEC reports.
While national GOP Senate donors put their money into other contests, Kirk was boosted by a super PAC created by one of his former top staffers. As of Oct. 19, the aptly named Independent Voice for Illinois had raised $2,468,850.
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