Big money still flows into campaign coffers
- Dan Petrella Times Bureau
- 9 hrs ago
SPRINGFIELD — There's a lot of uncertainty in Illinois politics these days, but one thing seems guaranteed: The flow of millions of dollars into key legislative races isn't going to be cut off anytime soon.
Before the current election cycle, the most that had ever been invested in a primary for a seat in the General Assembly was the $1.2 million spent in a 2014 Democratic contest between Rep. Christian Mitchell and Jay Travis in Chicago's 26th House District, said Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield and a campaign finance expert.
But this time around, two key races in last week's primaries — both widely viewed as proxy battles between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan — blew that total out of the water. A combined $10 million was spent on the races, each of which pitted a lawmaker who had bucked his party's leadership against a well-financed challenger.
In the Democratic primary between Rep. Ken Dunkin and Juliana Stratton in Chicago's 5th House District, the two sides combined to spend more than $6 million, with the bulk of that coming in the form of "independent expenditures" by super political action committees, groups that aren't supposed to coordinate with candidates. Rauner and his allies supported Dunkin after he broke ranks Democrats on important votes.
Downstate, nearly $4 million was spent on the Republican primary between Sen. Sam McCann of Plainview and state trooper Bryce Benton in the 50th Senate District, which stretches from Springfield south and west to the Mississippi River.
The Rauner camp bankrolled the effort in support of Benton after McCann, whose district includes many state employees, sided with Democrats on a labor-backed bill to send stalled union contract talks to arbitration.
Despite all that money, primary night didn't end well for the governor and his allies.
Stratton and McCann — whose supporters, including labor unions, were vastly outspent — won by wide margins, and Madigan fended off his own primary challenger, Jason Gonzales. Gonzales, a political newcomer, was the beneficiary of more than $800,000 in independent expenditures from a group called Illinois United for Change, a super PAC founded in January that has ties to Rauner allies and donors.
However, the primary results don't mean Rauner and those who support his agenda will change their strategy, Redfield said.
"Is it possible the governor can look at this and say, 'There's a limit to what I can do with my money, and I need to recalibrate'?" Redfield said. "I don't think that's the lesson he's going to draw from this."
Rauner, a multimillionaire venture capitalist, and allies like Ken Griffin, CEO of investment firm Citadel and Illinois' richest resident, have built up a war chest of more than $26 million between the governor's campaign fund and the Turnaround Illinois super PAC. That means the big spending will likely continue heading into November's general election.
Edwin Bender, executive director of the Montana-based National Institute on Money in State Politics, said the amount of money now being spent on certain Illinois legislative races is rare anywhere in the country.
The $6 million in the Dunkin-Stratton contest is more than most governors raise to win elections and more than many members of Congress raise, Bender said.
"That's where the independent money is going to be taking us," he said.
Illinois is in a unique position given who its governor and his allies are, Bender added.
"This isn't about elections; this is about winning a policy war, a political war," he said. "When you have the concentration of money and power in the hands of so few people, that's a very frightening prospect for the future of policymaking in Illinois."
Sarah Brune is executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which advocates for campaign finances reforms such as a law approved last year requiring independent expenditures of more than $1,000 to be disclosed within five days.
Brune said she's hopeful that results like last week's primaries and the struggles of well-funded candidates like former GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush will make politicians and donors take stock of the diminishing returns on their campaign investments.
"This is a watershed moment, not only at the state level," she said.
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