Political candidate called out for ad claims about being a volunteer firefighter
Illinois candidate on department for 7 weeks & responded to one call
Looking for a quality used fire truck? Selling one? Visit our sponsor Command Fire Apparatus
UPDATED
This is Dillon Clark’s response to the news report about Clark’s claim of being a volunteer firefighter.
EARLIER
How stupid can you be? If Dillon Clark actually knew anything about firefighters he would have known that as soon as you make a very public–and not all that accurate–claim about being a firefighter there will be firefighters more than willing to fact check you. Clark, running for the Illinois House of Representatives in the 95th District, posted his new campaign video on Facebook on June 12. It is chock full of firefighting images from a local department. Clark’s narration says he was a “volunteer fireman”. It turns out Clark had been a volunteer firefighter in another state for seven whole weeks and not the 1.2 years he claimed to a reporter. Mr. Volunteer Firefighter, according to that department’s chief, responded to a grand total of one incident, despite having previously said, “I did not do as well on my studies as I should have at the time because I was always running out trying to save the day.”
I’ve never understood politicians and others in the public eye who pad resumes. Despite a history of many being caught and publicly shamed, people still think they can get away with it. Don’t they realize how easy it is to check these things–especially today?
So, here’s to you Dillon Clark. You may not have been awarded a medal of valor for all the times you saved the day during those seven grueling weeks you spent fighting fires and saving lives, but I think you may deserve one now if you can save a campaign that may be going down in flames. You might start by removing the misleading campaign video that’s still on your Facebook page (see below) and offering an apology for your exaggerations.
Democratic candidate Dillon Clark, a newcomer to statehouse politics, posted a video to Facebook which shows him wearing a fireman’s helmet and climbing into the cab of the engine as he narrates, “As a volunteer fireman, I watched as the budget crisis tore apart our small towns.”
During an interview with WCIA, Clark claimed he was a volunteer for a small town station in Missouri for “one point two years,” but Bolivar Fire Department Chief James Ludden checked their employment records and found Clark was only on the volunteer roster for seven weeks in the fall of 2010 “during which time he attended one training event and responded to one emergency incident.”
“Once you embellish it like that, it really diminishes what people actually have done,” said Dean Heidke, chief of the Worden Fire Department in Madison County, the southern tip of the statehouse district.
Clark had previously said, “I did not do as well on my studies as I should have at the time because I was always running out trying to save the day.”
