Posted by Rick Pearson at 7:15 p.m.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk’s campaign said today it will voluntarily return donations from employees of commodities and investment firm Goldman Sachs after the decision Friday by securities regulators to charge the firm with fraud.
Kirsten Kukowski, a Kirk spokeswoman, said the five-term North Shore Republican congressman’s Senate campaign did not receive donations from the firm’s political action committee or any Goldman executives accused of wrongdoing. Instead, she said, Kirk made a “personal decision to go above and beyond the reasonable ethics standard and err on the side of caution.”
Kukowski said donations from Goldman Sachs employees made in the current cycle would be returned, though no figure was quickly available. Kirk’s Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, maintained the Republican had received $21,600 from Goldman Sachs employees this cycle out of more than $54,000 in his career.
As Democrats in Congress push financial regulatory reform legislation against GOP opposition, Giannoulias’ campaign has increasingly sought to label Kirk a puppet of Wall Street. Kirk, meanwhile, has hammered at problems with the Giannoulias’ family bank, Broadway Bank, which is in danger of being taken over by federal regulators.