Bought and Paid For: an update on campaign finances

This is a speech prepared for the July 29 board meeting.

It’s July, and that means the final campaign funding reports have now been filed with the State Board of Elections.  I’ve done the analysis and posted the information at the website d214parents.com.  Here’s what I learned.

First, the Supporters of District 214, that is, the PAC for the incumbent candidates and their handpicked replacement, outraised the D214 Parents for Kids, the PAC for the challengers, by a ratio of 4:1.

This might sound simply like strong support from the community.

But of the $20,904 in funds that they received, here’s the breakdown:

$15,000 came from teachers’ and staff unions.  That’s not including $1,033 in in-kind donations from the teachers’ union — yes, the endorsement postcard reported on in the Herald.

$1,350 came from the candidates themselves.

$1,000 came from a very wealthy outside donor.

$200 came from a well-known local politician.

And only $400 was in amounts small enough not to require itemization.

In addition, $3,836.33 was transferred into the account without reporting where the money came from, which looks a bit shady to me.

This means — considering only the money we know the origin of, about 85% came from unions.  In particular, $3,000 came from a union which was negotiating their contract at the very point in time that the election campaign was ongoing.

And here’s another item worth noting:  most of this money was spent on mailings, yard signs, and robo calls.  But a total of $3,000 was spent on consulting — $1,250 of which was paid to the treasurer of the PAC, who also works as the district director for the local Democratic State Representative Mark Walker, and another $1,250 to the individual who has the same role for the local Democratic State Senator Ann Gillespie.

By comparison, for the challenger PAC D214 Parents for Kids, every last penny above the $150 itemization threshold, was raised from ordinary local community members.  With the single exception of one personal friend of a candidate, who lives nearby, these donors live right here in District 214.  And, in fact, nearly half of the donations were in amounts small enough that they didn’t even reach this $150 itemization amount.

Which means here’s another calculation:  the D214 Parents for Kids challenger candidates outraised the Supporters of District 214, in terms of local community members and small donors, at a ratio of 13:1.

Which means that, no matter how often we community members come to these meetings and hear the board president recite a script that says that they listen carefully to our concerns, it is fairly clear that we are, in fact, wasting our breath.  They may reject the assertion that they are “bought and paid for by the teachers’ unions” but if you look at their actions, they certainly show no sign of any sense of accountability to the community, nor have any reason to feel any such accountability.

 

*Data source:

This information is publicly available at the Illinois State Board of Elections website.  From the main link, the filings for both PACs can be found by a committee search, in particular for “D214 Parents for Kids” and “Supporters of District 214,” or just searching for for all committees containing “214.”

The data was accessed on July 26, 2021.