Third Quarter Illinois Campaign Finance Report

October 16, 2018
Contact: Alisa Kaplan - alisa@reformforillinois - 312-436-1274

Third Quarter Campaign Finance Report:
The Final Stretch to Election 2018

With the midterm elections less than a month away, candidates up and down the ballot have been focused on pulling in enough cash to pay for pricey political ads and voter outreach operations. Fundraising and spending details were made public in reports due on Monday, October 15, for the quarter covering July 1 to September 30. Reform for Illinois’ team analyzed the financial reports for some of the state’s most watched races.

Illinois Governor

Turn on the TV or radio or surf the Web, and you will likely see or hear a J.B. Pritzker ad. Given Pritzker’s massive self-funded advertising budget, nobody in the Land of Lincoln can escape the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s talking points. Voters have also probably noticed an increasing number of ads in the mail and across the airwaves for local candidates. Pritzker and his Republican opponent, Gov. Bruce Rauner, are the indirect source of many of those as well.

Advertising and party building are the two main expenses for Pritzker and Rauner. The candidates’ wealth makes them a major factor in races across the state.

Read a full analysis of the fundraising and spending in the gubernatorial race by clicking the chart below.

Chicago Mayor

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s early September announcement that he would not seek re-election sent shockwaves through Chicago politics and spurred new candidates to enter the contest. Shortly after the announcement, Bill Daley, the son and brother of two former Chicago mayors; Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Board president; and Gery Chico, former Chicago Public Schools board president, all declared their candidacy.
As the third largest city in the country, the Chicago mayoral race represents a campaign to lead a population larger than 15 states and preside over a city government with an $8.6 billion budget. The position has drawn campaign contributors from across the country vying to influence this important position. So far, more than $5 million has been raised by 12 declared candidates.
Read a full analysis of the fundraising and spending in the mayoral race by clicking the chart below.

Illinois Attorney General

The race for attorney general has seen large fundraising figures and more media attention following incumbent Lisa Madigan’s September 2017 decision not to seek a fifth term. Since the election of President Donald Trump, Democratic state attorneys general, including Madigan, have increased their role on the national stage, in part by suing the federal government to challenge Republican policies.

As a result, this race may be viewed as pivotal to either party’s ability to influence national events from Illinois. Democratic state Sen. Kwame Raoul and Republican attorney Erika Harold garnered considerable financial support from various sources, including their respective party’s gubernatorial candidates.
Read a full analysis of the fundraising and spending in the attorney general race by clicking the chart below.

Illinois Congressional Delegation

Democrats are hoping for a “blue wave” to retake the U.S. House of Representatives. Currently, Republicans control the House 235 to 193, and Democrats are targeting key GOP-held districts in Illinois as potential flips in November. Three of the district races drawing significant spending are the northwest suburban 6th, the southwestern downstate 12th, and the exurban 14th.
Last week, the Cook Political Report ranked U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam’s 6th District as “Leans Democrat” and deemed U.S. Rep. Mike Bost’s 12th District and U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren’s 14th District to be “Toss-Ups.” While other analysts are slightly more optimistic about Republican chances, these seats have garnered enough national attention to draw a recent campaign visit by Vice President Mike Pence. Read about these races here.

Tax cuts for the rich, health care cuts for everyone else

Opinion

Their View: Tax cuts for the rich, health care cuts for everyone else

 

Our Picks

By Sara Dady and Michael Rothman

Posted Oct 14, 2018 at 1:00 PM

Less than a year ago, U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger and his Republican colleagues in the House voted for a tax bill that gave over a trillion dollars in tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires and wealthy corporations.

With a country facing so many important and expensive problems, from out-of-control health care costs to a crumbling infrastructure to a woefully underfunded education system, this Congress decided that tax cuts for the rich were their No. 1 priority. They made their choice, and this November, voters in Illinois’ 16th District have a choice of their own to make. Do they want a Congress that’s going to help working families, or do they want one that’s going to focus on making the rich richer?

This Congress has shown that it cannot be trusted to act with the interests of average American families in mind. Despite what many of them claim, last year’s tax bill wasn’t a middle-class tax cut, it was a massive handout to the ultra-wealthy.

Take it from one of us, a wealthy businessman who knows better than most just how much preferential treatment the top 1 percent get in this new Republican tax code: the entire thing was designed to funnel even more money towards those at the top, money that we don’t need. With 83 percent of the bill’s $1.9 trillion in tax cuts projected to go to the top 1 percent, there’s barely more than crumbs left for the rest of the population. And instead of leading to higher wages for workers, the huge corporate tax cuts in this bill have led to higher bonuses for CEOs and nearly $1 trillion in stock buybacks that just make wealthy investors richer.

Even worse, the Republican tax bill doesn’t just give too much to the wealthy and too little to working families — it actually makes life harder, and sicker, for millions of Americans. In order to free up more money for corporate tax cuts, Republicans eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, deliberately sabotaging American healthcare markets. With this change, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Republican tax bill will, over the next decade, cause 13 million fewer Americans to have health insurance and increase premiums by as much as an additional 10 percent each year. Rising healthcare costs are already hurting Illinois families, and if Republicans in Congress get their way, things are about to get much worse.

House Republicans are already using the deficit that they themselves created as an excuse to make massive cuts to programs that millions of Americans rely on. But don’t take our word for it, look at what they themselves have proposed. Earlier this year the Republican House budget proposal, their vision for what government spending “should” look like, included over $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other health programs, all in the name of fiscal responsibility.

There’s nothing responsible about giving away $2 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and corporations and then trying to pay for it by taking healthcare away from poor and elderly Americans who rely on those programs to survive. Those are massive cuts to programs that are absolutely essential to modern American life, and there’s simply no world in which this is an acceptable tradeoff to the American people or the people of Illinois’ 16th.

With rising healthcare costs and Medicare and Medicaid in jeopardy, thousands of families in Illinois’ 16th District are at risk of losing access to life-saving treatment because Adam Kinzinger and his colleagues in Washington decided that their health was less important than corporate profits. This is unacceptable. Health care is already too expensive for too many Illinoisans without our elected officials working against us. We need a Congress focused on making health care cheaper and more accessible, not taking it away from the most vulnerable among us.

Simply put, last year’s Republican tax bill was a disaster for our country that we can’t afford to repeat. This Congress, Rep. Kinzinger included, has shown itself to be either incapable or unwilling to actually work to make life better for normal Americans. We need legislation coming out of Washington that puts working families first, not their billionaire donors. It’s time we had a government that worked for the people, and to get there, we need new leadership in Congress.

Sara Dady of Rockford is the Democratic candidate for U.S. representative in the 16th district. Michael Rothman is CEO of Conger Management and a member of the Patriotic Millionaires.

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/opinion/20181014/their-view-tax-cuts-for-rich-health-care-cuts-for-everyone-else