Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk publicly apologized Tuesday for being "careless" in describing his military service, following a series of embellishments that could threaten his bid for President Barack Obama's former seat.
After a month of eluding questions and relying on written statements by his campaign, Kirk offered the mea culpa at his first news conference since reports surfaced about his false claims, including a prestigious award that he didn't win.
"I have made mistakes concerning certain aspects of my accomplishments and experience and I apologize for those mistakes and I pledge to correct those errors," Kirk told supporters and reporters at a suburban Chicago hotel. "I am not perfect and was careless. I will do better and I will make sure that this never happens again."
Kirk, a five-term congressman from Chicago's northern suburbs, said voters should continue to trust him in part because of his career in public service.
He and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, Illinois' first-term state treasurer, are vying for the seat in one of the highest-profile Senate races in the country. Obama held the seat for four years before winning the White House, and a Democratic loss would be a major embarrassment to the administration.
Kirk's statements about his background have become the focus of the race recently after Republicans had spent weeks attacking Giannoulias over the failure in April of his family's Chicago bank.
The Giannoulias campaign labeled Kirk's apology "hollow."
"Allow me to be blunt: Congressman Kirk wasn't careless and he didn't misremember — he lied," Giannoulias spokesman Matt McGrath said. "One mistake is careless. Misrepresenting, embellishing or not telling the truth about 10 different phases of your military career over a 10-year period is a pattern of lies, plain and simple."
Kirk's problems began with the revelation that his frequent references to being named the Navy's intelligence officer of the year were false. Instead, a slightly different award had gone to the intelligence unit that Kirk led, not to Kirk personally.
That was followed by a long string of other errors and exaggerations.
A letter from his office said he served in the first Gulf War when he did not. He has also referred to serving in the invasion of Iraq, although his duties kept him stateside. He said his Reserve work sometimes includes running the Pentagon war room, even though he oversees only the intelligence operations.
Although he had clearly described coming under fire while flying missions over Kosovo and Iraq, Kirk began to hedge and say the he couldn't be sure his plane was targeted by the anti-aircraft fire. And he didn't mention that he rode along on only a handful of flights — perhaps just three.
Kirk's campaign also denied that he had ever improperly mingled political activity with his military duties, only to have the Pentagon confirm that he had done exactly that on two occasions.
"The people of Illinois are very smart. They're going to see Alexi Giannoulias and I come in with strengths and weaknesses to this campaign and their job will be to compare and I feel very confident in that comparison," Kirk said.