Republican Sen. Mark Kirk is using his opposition to Donald Trump to convince Illinois voters they should support his bid for re-election.
“Mark Kirk bucked his party to say Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief,” says the narrator in an ad released Thursday by Kirk’s campaign.
Kirk, whose seat is being challenged by Illinois Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, revoked his support for Trump this month after the presumptive GOP presidential nominee leveled attacks against a federal judge over his ethnic heritage.
“While I oppose the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump’s latest statements, in context with past attacks on Hispanics, women and the disabled like me, make it certain that I cannot and will not support my party’s nominee for president regardless of the political impact on my candidacy or the Republican Party,” he recently told CNN.
Instead, Kirk plans to write in former CIA Director David Petraeus in the November election.
