Sen. Mark Kirk's Ex-Wife Accuses Him Of Campaign Fund Misuse

By aaroncynic in News on May 31, 2012 6:20PM

On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Kirk’s office responded to accusations of fiscal impropriety during his last campaign by calling allegations from his ex-wife “bitter personal attacks.” Kimberly Vertolli, a lawyer and Kirk’s ex-wife who received $40,000 from the Kirk campaign, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission which claims some $143,000 in fees and expenses paid to Kirk’s former girlfriend was improperly disclosed. According to the Tribune, the claim states that Kirk paid money to a third party working for the campaign, rather than to Dodie McCracken, his ex-girlfriend, directly.

While federal law allows candidates to pay spouses, relatives and friends for campaign work, Vertolli also stated that the $40,000 given to her through a corporate entity she created before joining his campaign was "hush money" "get me to be quiet about my misgivings about McCracken." Records show Vertolli was paid for 83 hours of legal research and a retainer, but her name doesn’t appear on the reports. Instead, a company called Athens & Sparta LLC received the payments, a business Vertolli runs from her home. “I do think the motivation in actually putting me on contract was to try to, was to get me to be quiet about my misgivings about McCracken and get my energy focused on helping Mark win,” she told the Tribune.

McCracken worked for a contractor called the Patterson Group, which Kirk’s campaign paid $1.85 million for advertising. The Patterson Group paid McCracken as a subcontractor, which Kirk says allows him to not have to disclose the payments to her. Todd Lightly, author of the Trib article, told NPR in an interview that the complaint filed says that if the payments were deliberately hidden, it could be deemed a violation of campaign finance rules.

A spokesperson for Kirk said “We responded to the FEC on December 31, 2011, and are confident that the Commission will dismiss the complaint.”