Illinois Senate contest is in ‘uncharted territory’
Rival candidates both have disabilities
The race for the Illinois Senate seat has drawn attention as one of the closest in the country. It also marks a milestone.
Republican Sen. Mark Kirk suffered a massive stroke and often uses a wheelchair. His Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, had her legs blown off while serving in Iraq.
“To have two candidates with disabilities run against each other is uncharted territory,” said Jennifer Duffy, Senate analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Re
port. “What’s in bounds, what’s out of bounds, I think, changes.”
The race is certainly testing the boundaries. A Republican group quickly deleted a tweet in March that accused Duckworth of “not standing up for veterans.” In Kirk’s case, questions swirl about whether he has recovered enough to participate in debates.
“It’s not something people are comfortable talking about publicly because it’s unseemly to do so, but the political reality is that it will be difficult for him to campaign as aggressively,” said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. “He’s had a stroke, and it’s just slowed him down.”
Kirk, sitting in his Capitol Hill office, a well-worn cane at his side and a wheelchair nearby, didn’t dispute that. In a 20-minute interview, he spoke slowly and deliberately but traversed topics from Donald Trump to Merrick Garland without a problem, although that does not necessarily indicate how he would perform amid the rapid-fire, back-andforth of a political debate. Kirk said he has seen marked improve- ment since his stroke in 2012 — he regularly climbs stairs, and his speech has grown more lucid — although he still faces challenges.
“Last night, my girlfriend had a long dinner to go to, and I was frustrated that ... it took me like a half an hour to walk to the grocery store to go get stuff,” he said, but the experience has forced him to be more patient, with himself and others.
Duckworth, who refers to herself as “differently abled,” has returned to as full a life as possible after a rocket-propelled grenade burst through the floor of the Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting and exploded in her lap in 2004. Sitting in a wheelchair in a conference room at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — the group trying to win back control of the Senate — Duckworth gushed about her daughter, born 18 months ago, and said she doesn’t let her injuries slow her down. She said she doesn’t plan to pull any punches in the campaign.
“I don’t think he would want any allowances made for the fact that he had a stroke, and I certainly don’t want any allowances made for the fact that I don’t have legs,” she said.
Kirk said he sees himself as one of the more moderate members of Congress — he supports same-sex marriage and was the first Republican senator to meet with Garland, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Kirk called Trump a “riverboat gambler” but said he supports the presumptive Republican nominee.
Kirk, who chairs a House subcommittee overseeing Veterans Affairs funding and has helped push through VA whistle-blower protections, has sought to make veterans’ issues a central theme in the Senate race — and has attacked Duckworth on them, something Duckworth calls a “Karl Rove strategy” — as when Republicans attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s war record in 2004.
“You attack your opponent’s greatest strength, and you cast doubt on their greatest accomplishments,” she said.
As director of the Illinois VA, she awarded the state’s first grants to provide counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder, implemented PTSD and traumatic brain injury screening and helped start a legal assistance program for veterans, among other initiatives.
She wears a prosthetic in place of her left leg but not for her right except on special occasions. Using both could trigger debilitating phantom pain in the limbs that are no longer there. “It affects my life every single day, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live a wonderful productive life, because ... I have to be worthy of the men who saved me,” she said.