Progress Illinois

In an interview published yesterday, GOP Rep. Mark Kirk, in Politico's words, "leveled some harsh, personal attacks against [Democratic challenger Dan] Seals, calling him an unemployed carpetbagger who wants to raise voters’ taxes." 

Here's an excerpt:

“He [Seals] didn’t move into the district and has some résumé issues. He has no steady job. He made $5,000 in income this year. He has made a number of missteps,” Kirk said. ”One of the things my opponent wants to do is raise the capital gains tax. You don’t have to explain a capital gains tax cut in my district. They can spell it out to you in spades, what it has done for their family.”

This isn't the first time Kirk or his campaign have attempted to paint Seals as an unemployed freeloader.  But rather than get into the fairness of this characterization, I'll instead explain why it's just blatantly hypocritical.

A little digging through Lexis led me to this March 23, 2000 Tribune article published during Kirk's initial run for the 10th Congressional District seat.  The article reports that Kirk had taken a leave of absence from his job on the House International Relations Committee in October 1999 to focus on his run for Congress:

Kirk, a former Kenilworth resident, formerly worked as [then-GOP Rep. John] Porter's chief of staff and has worked in Washington the past 18 years as a congressional aide. His most recent job was counsel to the U.S. House International Relations Committee.

Kirk, who took a leave of absence from his Washington job last October so he could run for Porter's seat, said he looked forward to the contest with [Democrat Lauren Beth] Gash.

The above account is backed up by this Washington Times member profile, which reports: "It was from that post [on the House International Relations Committee] that Kirk took a leave of absence to return to Illinois and run for Congress himself." And sure enough, a look at Kirk's personal financial disclosure (PDF) filed in 2001 shows that he earned only $7,000 during the preceding year.  That income came from his duty as an intelligence officer with the Naval Reserves (he embarked on brief training missions in both April and August 2000).

Let's be clear: there's nothing wrong with taking leave of absence to run for Congress.  It's an extremely labor-intensive undertaking and tough to balance with a separate, full-time job.  As Archpundit pointed out in July, it's even more difficult when -- like Seals -- you're challenging an incumbent who "is paid by the constituents, can mail to constituents with franking, can use [their] position to get [their] name out there, and generally have every advantage of incumbency."

What's wrong is attacking your opponent for taking some time off work when you did the same thing yourself as a first-time candidate.