A local legislative candidate is taking heat for allegedly embellishing his experience as a volunteer firefighter. Democrat Dillon Clark is challenging GOP Representative Avery Bourne.
In a campaign video, Clark says that as a volunteer firefighter, he saw how the state budget impasse was tearing small towns apart. But Clark was not a volunteer firefighter during the budget crisis… or at any time in Illinois.
He told WCIA-TV that he had spent a year in that role in Missouri, but the department where he volunteered said he only spent seven weeks in the department and only went on one emergency call.
Clark says in a statement he “frequented” the firehouse a lot and did… quote… “mostly everything a volunteer firefighter could do.”