Progress Illinois

Looking at the money raised by Illinois candidates for Congress reveals a couple of key developments.

First, former U.S Rep. Debbie Halvorson is literally giving incumbent U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. a run for his money in the Illinois 2nd District Democratic primary when it comes to fundraising. Second, there’s serious money in the 8th District primary race between Tammy Duckworth and Raja Krishnamoorthi. Read more »

The rush to revamp tenure rules and reform performance evaluations for Illinois' teachers slowed down a bit this month. At the first hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Education Reform, Chairman Kim Lightford (D-Maywood) told her colleagues that she was in no major hurry to shepherd through the so-called Performance Counts Act (PDF), a controversial package crafted by education advocacy organizations Advance Illinois and Stand for Children Illinois (SFC), among others. (We profiled the platform here.)

While Lightford tabled the debate a few weeks ago, don't expect the interest groups to drop the conversation entirely during the new legislative session, which began formally yesterday. This week, SFC filed its latest campaign finance disclosure form. In just four months between the group's creation and the end of the year (when the state's new campaign contribution caps went into effect), SFC raised a whopping $3.5 million, including six-figure donations from several of Chicago's leading political and financial players. During this election season, the group dumped $650,000 into eight state legislative campaigns, leaving over $2.8 million in the bank to begin 2011. Combined with their high-profile lobbyists and nominal support from both Democratic legislative leaders, this organization will have a primary seat at any education bargaining table.

It seems like an eternity ago that Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a legislative package that overhauls how Illinois politicians finance their campaigns. Starting Saturday, those rules will finally go into effect.

As we noted yesterday, the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform has produced a primer (PDF) on the new campaign finance reform measure that's well worth a read. At its heart, the bill attempts to rein in the often-corrosive influence of big money in state politics by tightening some of the weakest donation regulations in the nation. For the first time ever, there will be caps placed on the amount of cash individuals, PACs, and businesses can contribute each election cycle. Illinois' system for disclosing donations will be enhanced, too.

To be sure, the battle for reform isn't over. The law still preserves the ability of the four legislative leaders and the major political parties to dole out unlimited funds during the general election period, a loophole reformers want to close. This coming year, a bipartisan task force will also analyze how the bill functions and will deliver recommendations for improvements by January 1, 2012. House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) have already asked the appointees to "look into how the state might begin public financing of campaigns," which would be enormously significant. We will be following that story closely in 2011.

The 2010 election was the first campaign following the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial decision that allowed corporations to spend unlimited money on behalf of political candidates. According to a new study by a watchdog group, of the contests that changed hands on Tuesday, no one benefited more from this "dark money" than Illinois' Senator-elect Mark Kirk.

The watchdog group Public Citizen released a report (PDF) showing that of the 74 seats that switched parties on Election Day, Kirk received far more from these shadow outside groups than any other candidate. In the race for Senate, Kirk received over $8.7 million from groups accepting unlimited contributions or not disclosing the source of their money, compared to about $800,000 for Democratic candidate Alexi Giannoulias.

The biggest chunk of cash was routed through Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a group set up by Karl Rove. According to Public Citizen, Crossroads GPS dumped $5.6 million into ads hitting Giannoulias. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce poured another $1.7 million into Illinois.

The outpouring of support from these groups, coupled with Kirk's vote against the DISCLOSE Act, suggests the state's new junior Senator might be hesitant to support meaningful campaign finance reform in the upper chamber.

State Sen. Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge) announced yesterday he will serve as chief sponsor of legislation that seeks to increase financial disclosure requirements for a raft of public officials and candidates across Illinois, and push for the bill's passage during the General Assembly's November veto session. Here's Kotowski and Illinois PIRG executive director Brian Imus talking about the proposal yesterday in Springfield:

Senate Bill 2216 seeks to make the state economic disclosure statement (PDF) more thorough and specific. It would amend the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act by requiring public officials to detail their income sources, much of their property interests, various liabilities, positions they hold in business enterprises and non-profits, future employment plans, honoria worth more than $200 and gifts worth more than $500. Those filing would also be charged with disclosing the interests of "immediate family members," including spouses, siblings, and children with whom they share a household.

The legislation includes new language about appointees to state boards and commissions as well. Appointees would be required to disclose contributions worth $150 or more to political committees and donations to political defense funds, as well as name any immediate family members who are registered as a state or federal lobbyist, in addition to filing their economic interest statement. All of this information is to be filed electronically and made available for search via a database on the Secretary of State's website. While the bill does not mention candidate tax returns -- an issue in the current gubernatorial campaign, with GOP Lieutenant Gov. candidate Jason Plummer refusing to release his and Bill Brady limiting access to his returns -- SB 2216's stipulations would clearly bump up the volume of information about public officials' financial interests in Illinois.