Future of campaign finance reform in Illinois as dark as money involved

Community Word column January 2022

In the spring of 1996 Kent Redfield was a 47-year-old political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield where he wrote a report for the Illinois Campaign Finance Project (ICPR) outlining dozens of ways to change how candidates raise and spend money.

Considering the 25 years since – months after the state Supreme Court decided Auditor General Frank Mautino broke the state’s Act to Regulate Campaign Financing law – Redfield reminisces on wins and losses, and he’s not optimistic about improvements.

“Knowledge about the impact of money on politics is the foundation for allowing citizens to ask informed questions and forcing those giving and those taking money to be publicly accountable,” Redfield says. “Sunshine can influence votes in elections and influence behavior by public officials in making policy decisions. Making citizen knowledge and action a force in changing the culture is the key.”

His report, “The Pros and Cons: 38 Possible Options for Changing How Illinois Candidates Raise and Spend Money,” had a range of choices, from no changes to restrictions, public funding to strengthening enforcement. It came out in the middle of an evolution of campaign financing, from powerful political parties, to national and local scandals to the U.S. Supreme Court upending possibilities.

Illinois’ party organizations weakened in the ’60s, and self-recruited politicians and candidate-centered groups filled the fund-raising role. After Watergate, money in politics became an issue, and reformers helped Illinois enact modest reporting/disclosure mandates.

But by the early 1990s, money flooded into Illinois politics in ever-greater amounts with little regulation, oversight or transparency, says Redfield, adding, “Illinois was the wild West when it came to financing political campaigns.”

Regulations had no controls on raising and spending money in political campaigns, so reformers’ strategy became requesting changes when there was a scandal and then compromising.

“This strategy fit with Illinois’s political culture: pragmatic and power-oriented,” Redfield says. “When momentum built for change, the default position of those in power, regardless of party, was never ‘How can we to the right thing?’ but ‘What will it take to make this go away?’

“While the contribution-limits bill is really half a system (limits on private money coming in, no limits on parties and candidates moving it around after it comes in), the feeling was that the reform movement had taken the first big step. It turned out that it was the last step.”

There’d been little action in the early 1990s, and reformers increased researching and lobbying. Organizations like ICPR had some success between the mid-’90s and 2010, when the Supreme Court in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” essentially decided that money was speech and corporations were people.

“Citizens United” doomed options for contribution limits and public financing of campaigns, enabling the rise of “dark money” so outside groups could spend money in secret. Also, increasing wealth at the top of society and the super-rich’s participation in politics changed campaign finance in unexpected ways.

ICPR and Redfield’s report didn’t foresee such developments, especially “dark money groups using non-profit status to avoid disclosure and the inability of the FEC and IRS to deal with this fraud, and the impact of billionaire contributors and self-funding billionaire candidates,” he says. “I also didn’t anticipate how effective the designation of leader-controlled caucus committees would be in opening up the movement of money once it was given to a candidate. Once money gets into the system, legislative leaders can shift it anywhere in any amount.”

All that caused foundations funding reform efforts to turn to issues like redistricting, reformers refocused, and Illinois’ anti-reform political culture proved resilient, Redfield says.

“One weakness of campaign finance as a policy issue is that it doesn’t have a strong constituency within the legislature,” he says.

As to Mautino’s situation, “I continue to be surprised that the legislature is not willing to place limits on spending campaign contributions for non-election purposes,” he continues. “That raises ethical questions and confirms citizens’ opinions that all politicians are on the take. The fact the legislature amended the election code to add language that basically green-lighted the practices he was under investigation for tell you all you need to know about the dim prospects for ethics reform in Illinois.”

Trying to improve campaign financing in the 21^st century is daunting, Redfield says.

“To rebuild what was in place in 2010 would require the creation of reform organizations with stable funding,” he says. “It would also require a different constitutional structure in terms of free speech and contributing money. Finally, it would require changing or at least getting a stalemate with the political culture of Illinois.

“What needs to happen is complete disclosure of who is contributing and what they are contributing so that we can document how money is flowing into the system and how it is impacting who get elected and what policies are considered,” he adds. “A lack of political will and a lack of leadership and courage are the primary factors keeping this from happening.

“I am not very hopeful, short term.”