BY ABDON M. PALLASCH
Chicago Sun-Times
September 25, 2009
Since the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 earlier this month to cut off funding for ACORN, the activist/voter registration group has become so controversial that some are calling for sanctions against groups associated with it.
The debate is invading the race for U.S. Senate in Illinois.
Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk announced Friday he will hold a news conference calling on the U.S. Census Bureau to sever its ties to Illinois’ largest union, the Service Employees International Union, because, Kirk says, the group is too close to ACORN.
The union endorsed Kirk’s front-running Democratic rival for the Senate seat, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the previous day.
Up until ACORN became controversial for alleged vote fraud during last year’s presidential election, even Republican administrations funded the group.
Kirk himself voted in 2005 to approve a $140,000 earmark for ACORN’s New York office to fight teen delinquency, SEIU’s political director Jerry Morrison said.
A Kirk spokesman said he would research that vote but that Kirk would lay out his case against SEIU and ACORN at Monday’s news conference. The union even shares office space with an activist group “affiliated” with ACORN, Kirk says in his release.
The article continues at the Sun-Times.
