Mayoral Race Finds Holes in State Campaign Finance Reform

By Chuck Sudo in News on Mar 14, 2011 1:30PM

Chicago News Co-Op's Dan Mihalopoulos reports today on the loopholes some political donors have found in order to skirt the capped amounts they can donate to a political campaign. Simply write maximum dollar amount checks from separately owned and incorporated businesses.

Rahm Emanuel returned $50,000 from Jimmy John's executives after Crain's Greg Hinz raised questions about the donations. Mihalopoulos writes about a family of contractors with ties to Gery Chico who wrote six separate checks for $5,000 to the Chico campaign. Carol Moseley Braun's campaign also benefited from some creative splitting of campaign funds.

It's all legal because the drafters of the legislation forgot to include language in the law forbidding closely related businesses from making multiple donations to one candidate. Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (one of the organizations who helped lawmakers draft the legislation), said the revelations "violate the spirit of what we were trying to do. We need to figure out how to address that."

Maybe including the language in the the legislation the first time around would have been a good start.