Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Caps in the real world

Posted in:

Illinois

Imagine a rerun of Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election campaign, but this time under the tight donation caps [$2,400 individuals, $5,000 PACs] now being pushed by a blue-ribbon commission named by Gov. Pat Quinn. Even under that scenario, the analysis found, the Democratic incumbent would have enjoyed a nearly 3-1 fundraising edge over Republican challenger Judy Baar Topinka.

Blagojevich oversaw a fundraising juggernaut that raked in a state record $60 million in just eight years, including 454 separate gifts of at least $25,000. Plug in the commission’s proposed limits, and Blagojevich’s jackpot would shrink nearly in half, according to the analysis. But that’s still an impressive $34 million.

That’s just $6 million shy of the amount George Ryan raised throughout his entire political career.

Then again…

[Michael] Madigan’s state party has raised $25.5 million over the last eight years, but caps would have rolled that back by 69 percent to just under $8 million, the analysis showed. Since 2001, Madigan has used the state party to funnel $1.2 million to the coffers of his daughter, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan. Caps would have trimmed that back to $100,000.

However, Madigan isn’t accused of doing anything illegal by any prosecutors.

* And, yes, bad guys do contribute campaign money…

A large suburban management-consulting firm whose founder has been a major political donor was hit Tuesday with a wide-ranging deceptive business practices lawsuit from the Illinois Attorney General’s office. […]

[Attorney General Lisa Madigan], a potential 2010 contender for governor, accepted $22,700 in Burgess-linked campaign cash and in-kind services before becoming attorney general in 2003. She has not taken Burgess-related money since then and will not in the future, aides said. […]

Between 1999 and 2009, Burgess and entities tied to him contributed $679,933 to more than two dozen state campaign committees but saw $278,942 of that total returned as IPA’s legal problems deepened. Besides deceptive business practice allegations, IPA is fighting an EEOC class-action sexual-harassment lawsuit filed in 2001.

State campaign records show ex-Gov. Blagojevich was the largest recipient of Burgess-related cash, taking in $200,200 and another $15,000 through an affiliated campaign committee called Democratic Victory Fund. But all of those funds were returned.

The company’s contributions to Republican Rep. Sid Mathias became an issue in his campaign last year. Mathias won big.

* Related…

* State Pension Board Reforms Good First Step

* State panel approves pension boost for Blagojevich appointee

* Time to keep a scorecard on reform ideas: When the Quinn commission brought forth ideas on changes in government procurement, or how the state goes about securing goods and services, attorneys for the House and Senate Democratic leadership “closely questioned the reform commission about its procurement proposals, and an array of officials from state agencies testified that the commission’s ideas could cost the state time and money.”

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 6:31 am

Comments

I look at it from another angle; what is it that all the money is raised FOR. For TV and radio ads. If we made it so ads for official candidates were free, and all official candidates got the same number of ads, there would be much less need to raise this ridiculous amount of money, what else would you spend it on. Nothing else in a campaign costs anything like what TV and radio advertising does. Eliminate that cost, level that playing field, you short-circuit a major part of this rat race.

Comment by Gregor Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 6:42 am
“However, Madigan isn’t accused of doing anything illegal by any prosecutors.”

Someday, Illinois will be able to get to the point where a sentence like that doesn’t need so many qualifiers.

Comment by hmm Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 7:09 am
“Someday, Illinois will be able to get to the point where a sentence like that doesn’t need so many qualifiers.”

As much as I hope you’re right, I see no reason to believe that this will happen. Political corruption is as old as politics, and the vast majority in Springfield, even those who aren’t corrupt, aren’t willing to seriously confront their colleagues who are. The status quo is alive and well.

Comment by Thomas Westgard Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 7:43 am
I don’t see how you can get money out of campaigning in a big state with multiple tv and radio markets. Immediate reporting, transparency, then caveat emptor might be the best we can do.

Comment by wordslinger Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 7:57 am
The amount of money given for a campaign contributions is not the problem. The problem is that the candidates get to keep it after the campaign is over with. Lets get real, if the candidates know that all the money gather goes to the state at the end of the campaign then they would be less likely to run these pay to play scams.

Comment by Fixit Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 9:49 am
What is the difference between a honest candidate collecting $60 million in eight years and a dishonest candidate collecting $60 million in eight years?

The assumption here is that you have to be unethical and commit illegal acts to collect a great deal of money. But this assumption isn’t being placed across the political spectrum, is it? Obama bought the Oval Office, yet most people thinks he is peachy-keen-clean. So this assumption isn’t being equally shared.

It seems the only time we cry over how much a candidate spends is when they turn out to be a rotten turd. Then we assume they pulled a fast one over us with illegal contributions or such.

I just don’t believe that the amount of money collected during a campaign has anything to do with how honest the candidate is. So capping campaign contributions isn’t going to help and will only favor candidates with extensive networks, which favors incumbants who live within those networks.

The crux of our corruption is within each of our political parties themselves. They are no longer held accountable for the crooks they nominate. They seem to treat each of their nominee’s criminal acts as insulated incidents. They play victims, instead of politically leading. How can we expect good government from two political parties with a mindset of “win at any cost”? We, as voters, cannot legislate it away, since we are not the legislators, and the legislators are themselves a part of this corrupted system. We cannot expect reform from people who are winning their elected offices without reforms. We cannot expect legislators making campaign more competative, since that would be asking them to make their own re-elections more difficult.

And we clearly see that no one can shame our elected leaders into doing the right thing.

We have to threaten them. The only way these people listen is to threaten to remove them from their posh little fiefdoms. And threatening them only gets their attention for as long as the heat is on - then they run in circles and play the victim, instead of being the elected leaders they claim to be and meet voter’s demands.

Each political party is a private organization, and both of them claim that citizens have limits as to how much reform we can foist onto them, since they are private organizations. It is interesting to me that after 200 years, we are still allowing them to alter public policies and claim to be above public policies. This has to change.

This is our government. We pay for it. We own it. There is no reason why we cannot eliminate political parties from our statewide and local offices, and fund the elections ourselves. They do something similar to this in Nebraska, and I don’t recall Nebraskans being global laughingstocks over their political leaders as we have been experiencing for a decade.

Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that both the Democrats and the Republicans have lost their rights to direct Illinois state elections? What have they done to earn this important civic duty? How much longer should we allow them to wreck Illinois?

It is time to scrap this entire den of snakes, publically finance all statewide elections, end gerrymandering, go to a nonpartisan election system, and take control?

Comment by VanillaMan Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 10:04 am
Well put Vanilla Man. Very well put indeed. I tend to be a smidgen more the the left then you are on most issues, but on this one I couldn’t agree more. I won’t hold my breath though. After all, THIS IS ILLINOIS.

Comment by Mike Murray Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 10:21 am
VM

Let’s try ending gerrymandering of districts and go to computer drawn ones. I have come to believe that will do more good than contribution caps or public financing.

Comment by Leave a light on George Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 10:48 am
Yes, Nebraska is also the only state with one legislative house, they eliminated the senate, I believe, during the depression to save money. Great idea.

Comment by 32nd Ward Roscoe Village Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 11:17 am
since we know campaigns are not getting cheaper and the media is spending less attention on candidates — other than poll stories and name calling — it is safe to assume the candidates and committees will forced to spend MORE time on fundraising rather than less.
The “analysis” ,which was probably done by a non participant/ non contributor, assumes the limits mean the money will not be raised. False

Comment by 2ConfusedCrew Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 11:36 am
The whole problem with the “caps” is that the money could have still been spent on buying adds supportive of the elected officials campaign. Not giving it directly is not the same as not spending.

Instead of demanding 25k cash I demand 25k in supportive advertising.

Comment by Ghost Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 12:13 pm
Also, glad to see Mr. Granberg’s pension increase is approved. Would hate to see him walking the shores of Carlyle Lake collecting aluminun cans. After 18 days at the helm of IDNR he deserves every penny of it.

Comment by Leave a light on George Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 12:35 pm
The pension thing isn’t Granberg’s fault.

Comment by steve schnorf Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 1:34 pm
Caps on campaign donations under consideration by the reform commission, as laid out in the Trib article, are calculated not to change much.

See for yourself. Go to http://www.followthemoney.org/database/mydistrict.phtml and put in your district to see the top 20 contributors to your elected legislative official. I entered the zip code for my loop office and up came a state legislator for the Loop.

In the 2008 cycle, Followthemoney shows that he raised a total of approximately $370,000, approximately $47,000 from Friends of Mike Madigan. Of the top twenty contributors, twelve contributed $5000 or less. So with “reforms” the state committee contribution drops to $30,000, and corps & unions – many of which are already under $10,000—drop to that amount. It’s much the same for other legislators. As the Trib article suggests, the Quinn plan is essentially a no-change change.

Elected officials see campaign contributions as necessary to maintaining party organizations to run for election and getting elected. They’re wrong.

In this self-perpetuating system, elected officials appoint supporters to government jobs and award contracts, which in turn enable and obligate supporters to contribute to campaigns. Contrary to locally held belief, elected officials are not entitled to use public office to compel employment and contributions to perpetuate themselves in office. If this corrupt system were disrupted in this state, the people would have no difficulty in finding candidates and maintaining organizations necessary to elect honest and fair dealing representatives. But electors cannot do it in the face of a corruptly funded juggernaut.

What is needed is to disrupt the corrupt self-perpetuating system, not to perpetuate it as the non-change changes would do.

Comment by anon III Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 2:02 pm
Schnorf

Granburg had one purpose in taking the DNR job. It was to get a lodge built at Carlyle Lake for his buddies. He didn’t give a rat’s behind about DNR or its mission. In fact many years ago as a legislator/lawyer he meddled in a way that some might view as criminal, certainly unethical. To get an enhanced retirement for that type of service to our citzens is wrong on every count.

Comment by Leave a light on George Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 2:51 pm
The total dollars are way too high, but made necessary because of the long campaign season.

Shorten the campaign season, fine out of season political hugger muggery. Deliver the fines to the opposition party.

Less money needed to run.

Comment by Truthful James Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 2:54 pm
===Less money needed to run. ===

Doubtful. If you move the February primary back to June or whatever, you’re lengthening the primary season because you can’t really advertise during Christmas holiday season.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 3:50 pm
Guess what other IL pol has taken tens of thousands of dollars from IPA (referenced above)- Chris Lauzen, Mr. Reform.

Comment by Elgin Ken Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 4:41 pm
George, then the pension money wasn’t his goal?

Comment by steve schnorf Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 5:20 pm
Just a nice beni. How much extra do you think Granberg paid into the system in those 18 days - two, three dollars maybe?

Comment by Leave a light on George Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 7:16 pm
Steve, that rumor about the “lodge for the buddies” has been floating around for at least 10 years. “George” is full of baloney.

If Granberg really wanted to get that done as his #1 goal, he didn’t need to be the DNR Director to do it.

He had a far better launching point for a lodge deal when he was a legislator and a member of the State Investment Board. With the wily Big Ed Smith at the helm (and the oily Mike Getz as his successor) and the invertebrate Bill Atwood as the deal man, ISBI would gladly fund just about anything that was located in Illinois and used union labor.

Doubters here may want to read up on the disastrous student slum Getz and Atwood dropped $50 million in over in C/U, “Burnham 310.” Millions in mechanics’ liens, months late, and only one-third certified for occupancy.

This would also be the same duo that is gunning to take over all the pension investments, one way or another. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Comment by Arthur Andersen Thursday, Apr 23, 09 @ 11:54 pm
AA, thankx. I knew the Granberg stuff, just kind of playing along to see where it went. I’ afraid the bad guy in that little drama was the former Gov, who I believe promised Granberg the job a year or more ago. I could be wrong

As to ISB, I don’t know Getz, didn’t know Smith. Atwood and I used to work together for Edgar when he was SoS. I’ve think Atwood is a pretty good guy, so you and I probably disagree on that one.

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Apr 24, 09 @ 12:30 am
Steve, AA likes Atwood, too-just afraid he may be working out of position, if you will.

Comment by Arthur Andersen Friday, Apr 24, 09 @ 6:27 am