* Mark Kirk has a new campaign ad. Rate it…

* Script…

She’s only a few weeks old but she already owes the federal government 43,000 dollars.

Will she have a better life than us? Or worse? How will she afford college, her first home?

Mark Kirk: If you’re as worried as I am about our skyrocketing national debt, runaway spending, and the lack of jobs, I need your vote. I’ll fight to spend less, borrow less and tax less so our children have a better future.

I’m Mark Kirk and I approved this message.

* Response from Giannoulias campaign…

After two decades in Washington DC supporting all of the Bush economic policies that sunk our economy into recession, Congressman Mark Kirk today released another ad that lies about his fiscal record.

“In ad after ad, Congressman Kirk expects voters to throw truth to the wind and forget his record of doubling the national debt and voting against tax cuts for the middle class,” said Alexi for Illinois campaign spokesman Scott Burnham. “The record is clear: Congressman Kirk’s votes took the country from record surpluses to record deficits by handing out tax cuts to millionaires and large corporations, while leaving the middle class and small business to fend for themselves. That’s not a record to be proud of, and it’s not the type of leadership that Illinois families can trust.”

…Adding… The Kirk spot appears to be a popular one this year. Ohio Republican congressional candidate Steve Stivers is running basically the same ad, except that he uses his own daughter…

* Meanwhile, in news from Kirk’s home district, Bob Dold has been threatened with an FEC audit. One of his constituents filed a complain alleging that he hadn’t reported spending money on his big campaign tour bus…

“I noticed he made very careful filings of expenditures under two dollars and I couldn’t imagine why an expenditure of this size was not listed,” Stowell explains of a motor coach that was used in Dold’s ads as part of a bus tour he touted post-primary and through the summer. In April, the cost was disclosed as about $15,000, but in July’s report, it wasn’t there.

Stowell wrote the FEC and she got a letter back. The Dold campaign got one too, threatening audit or enforcement action if he failed to provide more information. The FEC said Dold’s numbers don’t add up.

In Dold’s amended report, we found around $22,000 in debts that had gone unreported, as well as about $24,000 in expenditures. His cash on hand is listed as $22,000 more than it was the first time. But he did add the debt for the bus- it cost around $17,000.

“It would be really hard to say that a $17,000 miss was just sloppy bookkeeping. It looks a little funny,” said Burt Odelson, an election attorney who represented President Bush in the 2004 recount.

Watch the report…

 

* Dold also complained to the Daily Herald about his opponent’s campaign posting a harsh remark on his Facebook page…

Republican congressional candidate Robert Dold and his Democratic rival, Dan Seals, have something new to fight about: Facebook.

On Wednesday, a posting appeared on Seals’ Facebook page tipping off his Internet followers to a news report about Dold.

“Uh oh,” began the post, which was attributed to Seals and ran next to his picture. “The Cook County Clerk and States Attorney are now looking into Dold’s potential property tax fraud.”

An electronic link to a Chicago-area media report raising questions about Dold’s residency and voting record in the last decade followed. The comment was posted on Seals’ Twitter account, too.

However, representatives of the clerk’s office and the state’s attorney’s office insist there is no investigation.

The matter was referred to the state’s attorney by the Cook County Clerk. But the state’s attorney claims there’s nothing going on with the issue.

What Dold did manage to do, however, was move the residency story from the Sun-Times, where it began, to the Daily Herald.