HRC Revokes Endorsement Following Racist Comments of Senator Mark Kirk [View all]

[brooklynite]

Source: Human Rights Campaign


Today, HRC announced it is revoking the endorsement of Senator Mark Kirk. HRC has also endorsed Tammy Duckworth for Senate and is contributing the maximum to her campaign.

HRC President Chad Griffin released the following open letter to members and supporters explaining this decision:

“After careful consideration, HRC’s Public Policy Committee of the Board of Directors has taken the unprecedented step -- a first in our 36-year history -- of revoking an endorsement. We are a bipartisan organization and our staff and board make endorsement decisions based on a proven record of LGBTQ equality and a candidate’s ability to drive legislative change. We will not continue to make progress and pass the Equality Act without Republican support. It’s vitally important that we continue to build bipartisan coalitions so that we may continue to move equality forward. We endorsed the sitting senator, Mark Kirk, because he has been a strong supporter of our cause time and again, scoring a 100 percent on HRC’s most recent Congressional Scorecard. But events this week have gone beyond the pale for our standards of leadership.

“Leadership is about more than the legislation one sponsors and the votes one casts. On Thursday night, Senator Kirk's comments about his opponent's heritage were deeply offensive and racist. His attempt to use Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth’s race as a means to undermine her family’s American heritage and patriotism is beyond reproach. Yesterday, Senator Kirk tweeted an apology that failed to adequately address the real harm and magnitude of his words. So today, following a vote by our board’s committee, the Human Rights Campaign withdrew our support of Senator Kirk.

Read more: http://www.hrc.org/blog/hrc-revokes-endorsement-following-racist-comments-of-senator-mark-kirk