Navigation target changed for first time…

Greetings, I’ve exhausted the forums looking for an answer so this is my last resort.I’m using WP 3.8 with the blankslate theme.

My question is this. I’ve hand coded my own drop down navigation and inserted into header.php. (I would have used the WP menu navigation but I couldn’t figure out how to style it with CSS for a dropdown menu) I’m sure I’ll catch heck for that but do to time constraints I was more comfortable writing it myself. Anyways,..Here is the code. I’ve changed the links for customer privacy.

<!--begin Navigation -->
<div id="nav_bar">
<div id="navigation">
<ul>
<li><a href="https://nchouselegislativepartners.com/about/" target=”_self”>About Us</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/about/" target=”_self”>Who We Are</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/leadership/" target=”_self”>NCHLP Leadership</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/member/" target=”_self”>Become A Member</a>
</li></ul>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/our-goal/" target=”_self”>Our Goal</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/house-members/" target=”_blank”>House Members</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://rl.net/House/houseleadership.html" target=”_blank”>House Leadership</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.org/nc/legislators/?chamber=lower" target=”_blank”>Find Your Representative</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#" target=”_self”>Top Issues</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/economy-2/" target=”_self”>Economy</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/environment/" target=”_self”>Environment</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/education/" target=”_self”>Education</a></li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/job-creation/" target=”_self”>Job Creation</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://rl.com/media/" target=”_self”>Media</a> </li>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
  </div>
  <!--end Navigation -->

As you can see, most of the links are set to “_self” as the target save two of them that go to external sites.

For some reason when you go to the live site the navigation opens pages in a new tab the first time you use the navigation (doesn’t matter which link) like the target is set to “_blank” (which its not). However If you use the navigation on the page that’s been opened in the new tab it then adjusts to using the specified targets of “_self” and opens in the same page/tab.

This happens no matter which page you start from. I can open the site at the “home”,”about” or any page and it does this,… but only in the original window. The navigation in the newly opened tab works as its supposed to.

I’ve looked at everything I can think of,… Anyone know of a setting that changes your navigation target for the first time you use it and not after that? I’m honestly stumped….