July 10--On the heels of an announcement by an environmental group that it would launch attack ads against him, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk has set a Friday news conference to tout his support of keeping the Great Lakes clean.
Kirk, a first-term Republican facing a difficult re-election effort next year, is set to appear at the Shedd Aquarium Friday morning with lake sustainability advocates to discuss the negative impact that sewage dumping and the plastic microbeads found in toothpaste and other products have on the ecosystem of the Great Lakes.
According to Kirk's office, he has supported legislation designed to curb the release of untreated sewage into the lakes and to ban the sale of cosmetics that contain microbeads.
Friday's event comes less than a week after the Natural Resources Defense Council announced it would spend $1 million in TV ads attacking Kirk for a recent vote to support Republican efforts to cut the Environmental Protection Agency's overall funding and to stop what the GOP called the agency's "executive overreach."
The ad campaign, which the environmental group said will run through July 17 on Chicago broadcast and cable stations, features a 30-second spot that contends a vote Kirk cast last month on an EPA bill allowed power plants to "keep polluting our air."
"Polluters are breathing a lot easier, but nearly 300,000 Illinois children aren't," the narrator says in the spot, which depicts pollution streaming from smokestacks, a field of withered corn and an infant breathing through a nebulizer mask.
The ad gives the phone number for Kirk's Washington office and urges viewers: "Tell Sen. Kirk to stop protecting polluters and start protecting our kids."
Two Democrats are vying in a primary campaign for the right to face Kirk in November 2016: U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth, of Hoffman Estates, and Andrea Zopp, a former federal prosecutor and Chicago Board of Education member. Democrats view Kirk's seat as a potential pickup next year.
jebyrne@tribpub.com
