Few people are better positioned to cash out to K Street than a moderate former Senator from the majority party. So why isn’t Illinois Republican Mark Kirk working for Arent Fox or Alston Bird yet?
It would seem Kirk is becoming a small businessman.
“I’ll probably set up a firm of my own,” Kirk told a bipartisan crowd of Illinoisans the night before the inauguration, “to work with my expertise on behalf of large employers in Illinois to ensure that they are well represented in Washington, D.C.”
The Chicago Tribune’s Kim Janssen has the story:
He’d represent “big Illinois outfits in Washington, and also in Beijing,” he said, adding that he is planning to go to Beijing “under the sponsorship of the Chinese government.”
“They regularly bring over retired senators, so there’s seven or eight of us going on an exchange visit to China,” he said.
“I’ve already talked to Boeing,” he said, adding that he had discussed President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter rant against Boeing with the company.
Among Senate Republicans, Kirk was the most vociferous supporter of the Export-Import Bank, the federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports, primarily Boeing jets.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
