* More background is here if you need it. Remember this?
Johnson’s campaign folks said they’d actually raised $200K during the quarter, but that it wasn’t reported.
* Turns out, they were apparently allowing the campaign checks to pile up before they deposited them, which they finally got around to doing. Tribune…
A new campaign finance report filed by Mayor Brandon Johnson includes over $200,000 his campaign had discussed but not officially reported. […]
State law requires politicians to report contributions greater than $1,000 within five business days of depositing the contributions. While Johnson may have been given checks for the large contributions months earlier, he appears to have followed campaign finance law by reporting the money shortly after depositing it, Illinois State Board of Elections spokesperson Matt Dietrich said.
Politicians often hold on to uncashed checks until elections get closer, he added. But for regulators, what matters is the deposit day.
“It’s not the day they had this big fundraiser, it’s the day they took all the money they raised at that fundraiser and put it into their bank account,” Dietrich said. “By our system, this has been done by the rules.”
It’s unclear whether any of those checks were received but not cashed during the Democratic National Convention last year, because the mayor’s third quarter report only disclosed about $3500 in receipts.
* Meanwhile, from the Sun-Times…
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign fund has returned most of a $50,000 contribution it accepted a year and a half ago from a political action committee led by a City Hall lobbyist whose law firm has a city contract to collect outstanding utility bills.
Chicago ethics rules bar campaign contributions to a mayor by city lobbyists and city contractors. The Friends of Brandon Johnson campaign fund appears to have repeatedly violated those restrictions since Johnson took office in May 2023, prompting tens of thousands of dollars in refunds, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.
The latest give-back appears to have been prompted by City Hall Inspector General Deborah Witzburg finding that the $50,000 given by the Chicago Latino Public Affairs Committee in June 2023 “exceeded the contribution limits set forth in” Chicago’s city code.
…Adding… It’s always a self-inflicted drip, drip, drip with this administration…
