Sen. Mark Kirk apologizes after taking shot at opponent Tammy Duckworth’s heritage

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk apologized early Friday afternoon after widespread censure for his racially charged quip against Democratic challenger Rep. Tammy Duckworth.

During Thursday night’s debate, Kirk invoked her Thai-Chinese heritage to question her family’s extensive military service. His campaign initially released a statement, in which he did not apologize, suggesting that her family’s service is a distraction from the real issues. But, after pervasive condemnation, he acquiesced and issued an apology on Twitter.

At the debate, Duckworth, who was born in Thailand to a mother of Chinese descent and a white father from the United States, proudly cited the extensive record of military service on her father’s side of the family, stretching back to the dawn of the country.

Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran and former assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs, argued that it’s important that senators understand the burden carried by military families when debating whether to send the nation’s men and women in uniform into harm’s way.

“My family has served this nation in uniform going back to the Revolution. I’m a daughter of the American Revolution. I’ve bled for this nation,” she said at the University of Illinois in Springfield. “But I still want to be there in the Senate when the drums of war sound, because people are quick to sound the drums of war, and I want to be there to say, ‘This is what it costs; this is what you’re asking us to do. And if that’s the case, I’ll go.’ Families like mine are the ones that bleed first.”

When it was Kirk’s turn to respond, the Republican uttered a single sentence that was intended to be a zinger but merely resulted in awkward silence: “I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”

Duckworth later responded to the wisecrack on Twitter with a picture of her in uniform standing with her mother and father, whose military decorations are clearly on display over his left breast pocket.

Yahoo News reached out to Kirk’s campaign’s manager and spokesman to elaborate on what the senator meant by his remark and to address the subsequent controversy that has grown around it. The campaign manager provided the following statement via email:

“Senator Kirk has consistently called Rep. Duckworth a war hero and honors her family’s service to this country. But that’s not what this debate was about. Rep. Duckworth lied about her legal troubles, was unable to defend her failures at the VA and then falsely attacked Senator Kirk over his record on supporting gay rights.”

Duckworth served as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot for the Illinois Army National Guard in the Iraq War. She was awarded a Purple Heart in 2004 after an RPG hit her helicopter. She lost both her legs and partial use of her right arm in the attack. Afterward, Duckworth became an advocate for wounded veterans.

Kirk’s one-liner about Duckworth’s family and heritage was widely rebuked.

VoteVets, a nonpartisan political action committee dedicated to giving veterans a voice, said Kirk was already losing to Duckworth and that his “racist debate remarks” pushed his campaign “over the cliff.”

Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chair of VoteVets, released a statement saying the organization would call on Kirk to drop out but added it would rather “see him get beaten handily at the polls.”

“There is no room for racism in the military, and no room for racism in America. Mark Kirk can say whatever he wants,” Soltz said, “but last night he made clear that he will run his campaign, and the office of senator, the same way Donald Trump has run his campaign — based on racial and ethnic slurs, insults and tarring nonwhites as not sufficiently American.”

Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign manager, also lambasted Kirk.

In June, Kirk rescinded his support for Trump and said that the billionaire businessman’s belief that a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent would be incapable of presiding fairly over the Trump University fraud case was both “dead wrong” and “un-American.”

“After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world,” Kirk said.

Some found Conway’s insult disingenuous and hypocritical because Trump too has been taken to task for insulting veterans and mocking a reporter with a disability .

Many viewers watching the debate were simply astounded by Kirk’s comment, which they considered either tone-deaf or blatantly racist, and the senator’s apparent refusal to apologize for it.