“I forgot your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington," Sen. Mark Kirk told Rep. Tammy Duckworth during the debate on Thursday. | AP Photo Sen. Kirk apologizes for comments on Duckworth's ethnicity

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk apologized Friday for invoking Rep. Tammy Duckworth’s ethnicity during a debate on Thursday between the two Senate candidates in which the Republican incumbent suggested that the Democrat’s family did not have the history of military service that she claimed.

Duckworth, an Army veteran who lost both of her legs in Iraq when a helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by insurgents, said Thursday night at her debate with Kirk that “my family has served this nation in uniform going back to the Revolution.”


While Duckworth’s mother is of Thai descent, her father was a U.S. Marine who did in fact trace his family history back to the American Revolution, but that did not stop the incumbent senator from quipping that “I forgot your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”

Duckworth did not reply to Kirk’s remark during the debate, but the line quickly drew criticisms of racism from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which called on him to apologize. Kirk did just that on Friday, offering on Twitter his “sincere apologies to an American hero, Tammy Duckworth, and gratitude for her family's service.”

Kirk’s is widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican-held Senate seat in the upcoming election. The RealClearPolitics polling average of the race gives Duckworth a 7-point advantage, although the most recent poll for that race was conducted nearly a month ago.