It's way too early for this so no analysis, I just wanted to post this somewhere I could find it later. These are the seats that will be up in the Illinois Senate next cycle, 21 of 37 Democrats and 18 of 22 Republicans.
2 - Omar Aquino (D)
3 - Mattie Hunter (D)
5 - Patricia Van Pelt (D)
6 - John J. Cullerton (D)
8 - Ira I. Silverstein (D)
9 - Daniel Biss (D)
11 - Martin A. Sandoval (D)
12 - Steven M. Landek (D)
14 - Emil Jones, III (D)
15 - Napoleon Harris, III (D)
17 - Donne E. Trotter (D)
18 - Bill Cunningham (D)
20 - Iris Y. Martinez (D)
21 - Michael Connelly (R)
23 - Thomas Cullerton (D)
24 - Chris Nybo (R)
26 - Dan McConchie (R)
27 - Tom Rooney (R)
29 - Julie A. Morrison (D)
30 - Terry Link (D)
32 - Pamela J. Althoff (R)
33 - Karen McConnaughay (R)
35 - Dave Syverson (R)
36 - Neil Anderson (R)
38 - Sue Rezin (R)
39 - Don Harmon (D)
41 - Christine Radogno (R)
42 - Linda Holmes (D)
44 - William Brady (R)
45 - Tim Bivins (R)
47 - Jil Tracy (R)
48 - Andy Manar (D)
50 - Sam McCann (R)
51 - Chapin Rose (R)
53 - Jason A. Barickman (R)
54 - Kyle McCarter (R)
56 - William R. Haine (D)
57 - James F. Clayborne, Jr. (D)
59 - Dale Fowler (R)
I've been busy catching up on all of the things I put off until after the election so here's a very belated post-mortem.
Note: the vote totals are not yet final and certified, those numbers will change. The numbers shown here are for 100% of precincts reporting on election night and do not yet include any ballots counted post-election night.
President
The Democrats swept the three statewide races and of the three Hillary Clinton won by the largest margin, 16.5 points (compared to about 15 points for Duckworth and about 4.5 for Mendoza), and had the most total votes. Of the three Democratic candidates Clinton may have had the most paid media even if it wasn't paid for by her campaign directly, Leading Illinois for Tomorrow (LIFT), a federal superpac, spent roughly $9 million on ads that were ostensibly designed to drive up Governor Rauner's negatives but mostly just functioned as Trump attack ads (see here and here, for example).
In the Chicagoland region her numbers were historically strong. In Chicago she basically matched Obama's 2012 numbers and wasn't far off his 2008 totals. In the Cook County suburbs she was even better than Obama's 2012 numbers and far ahead of Kerry 2004 and Gore 2000. She won the collars outright and again bested Obama 2012, Kerry 2004 and Gore 2000.
| Region | Clinton | 14 Quinn | 12 Obama | 08 Obama | 04 Kerry | 00 Gore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cook County | 74.65% | 64.74% | 74.01% | 76.21% | 70.25% | 68.63% |
| ___Chicago | 83.71% | 77.35% | 84.00% | 85.41% | 81.28% | 80.14% |
| ___Cook Burbs | 65.38% | 52.75% | 63.82% | 66.64% | 58.97% | 56.44% |
| Collars | 52.30% | 37.91% | 50.53% | 55.79% | 45.46% | 43.92% |
| Downstate | 37.86% | 33.93% | 45.33% | 51.00% | 44.75% | 46.39% |
| TOTAL | 55.70% | 46.35% | 57.60% | 61.92% | 54.82% | 54.60% |
The Trump Vote
Outside the Chicagoland area it was a different story. Trump won the 90 counties outside the Chicago media market roughly 57-37, some in historically commanding fashion. Looking at the vote totals by media market what's strange is that down the middle Trump's numbers were downright ordinary. In the Rockford, Peoria and Champaign/Springfield/Decatur media markets his vote totals were very similar to Romney 2012 and all lagged Bush 2004 and espeically Rauner 2014. Yet in the remaining media markets Trump's numbers blew away the other Republican presidential candidates this century and either rivaled or surpassed Rauner's 2014 numbers. Remember, Rauner won the state by 4 points (with very impressive downstate numbers) and Trump lost it by more than 16 so to rival or surpass Rauner's performance in these areas was no small feat for Trump.
| MM | Trump | 14 Rauner | 12 Romney | 08 McCain | 04 Bush | 00 Bush |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C/S/D | 55.75% | 61.77% | 55.13% | 49.09% | 57.59% | 52.94% |
| Chicago | 30.57% | 44.85% | 34.75% | 31.49% | 39.35% | 38.30% |
| Evansville | 79.26% | 76.33% | 70.46% | 58.08% | 66.91% | 61.75% |
| Paducah | 66.03% | 61.67% | 57.32% | 51.78% | 55.90% | 49.48% |
| Peoria | 53.39% | 59.87% | 53.88% | 48.37% | 55.47% | 52.60% |
| Quad Cities | 50.64% | 55.34% | 42.87% | 41.20% | 47.86% | 44.35% |
| Quincy | 68.40% | 70.41% | 60.95% | 55.52% | 60.96% | 55.03% |
| Rockford | 51.49% | 59.39% | 49.10% | 45.32% | 53.57% | 52.14% |
| St. Louis | 57.29% | 59.79% | 50.70% | 44.83% | 49.81% | 46.37% |
| Terre Haute | 74.52% | 70.78% | 66.33% | 55.40% | 64.61% | 59.56% |
| TOTAL | 39.13% | 50.27% | 40.73% | 36.78% | 44.48% | 42.58% |
We have good data on total media buy spending for each campaign but the data I wish I really had but don't is the spending for each campaign media buy by media market. I can tell you from my past experience working on statewide campaigns when we went up on TV the first markets we bought downstate were the three down the middle (Rockford, Peoria and Champaign/Springfield/Decatur) because they are entirely within the state so those buys/markets were more efficient than the rest which include viewers in other states. I suspect the reason that Trump's numbers down the middle were so pedestrian has to do with media buys. If we had the LIFT spending by media market perhaps we'd find that the bulk of their spending was in Chicago and these three downstate media markets while neglecting the rest, or perhaps some other media buy explanation holds the key, but I'd bet the reason has to do with paid advertising.
US Senate
Here's what I wrote in my What to Watch For post on election day:
Downstate - In 2010 the downstate 96 counties were especially strong for the Republicans. Kirk and Brady both got 59% of the vote. The Democrats rebounded in 2012, Romney only got about 53% of the vote there, but the Republicans came back strong in 2014 when Rauner took 61%. Can Kirk replicate the downstate Republican performance of 2010 and 2014 or will the Democrats improve as they did in 2012? Suburbs (especially the northern ones) - in 2010 Kirk won his race by about a point and a half and Brady lost to Quinn by about half a point. Most of the difference came in the Cook County suburbs and the collars and most of that difference came in the northern end. Kirk had represented the north shore in Congress and those voters rewarded him in his Senate race. Kirk did about three and a half points better than Brady in the 5 traditional collar counties combined but it was even more pronounced in Lake County where the difference was six and a half points (56.6% to 50.1%). He's going to need to run just as strong in Lake County again to help his chances.
Kirk just couldn't match his 2010 performance this time around, he even lost his stronghold of Lake County 50-45 and the bottom fell out just about everywhere. He did about 7 points worse downstate, 10 points worse in the Cook County suburbs and 11 points worse in the collars.
| Region | 16 Kirk | 10 Kirk |
|---|---|---|
| Cook County | 24.94% | 31.63% |
| ___Chicago | 16.35% | 19.47% |
| ___Cook Burbs | 33.68% | 43.47% |
| Collars | 45.48% | 56.24% |
| Downstate | 52.09% | 59.02% |
| TOTAL | 39.97% | 48.01% |
Comptroller
Susana Mendoza scored an impressive victory against a much better funded incumbent which may add a new variable to an otherwise unchanging Springfield budget battle, but it's worth noting that while losing Leslie Munger still outperformed the top of her ticket by about 12 points.
| Region | Munger | Trump | Kirk | 14 Rauner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cook County | 29.12% | 21.16% | 24.94% | 33.26% |
| ___Chicago | 19.10% | 12.47% | 16.35% | 20.63% |
| ___Cook Burbs | 39.27% | 30.05% | 33.68% | 45.32% |
| Collars | 51.56% | 41.76% | 45.48% | 59.51% |
| Downstate | 56.12% | 56.45% | 52.09% | 60.81% |
| TOTAL | 44.62% | 39.13% | 39.97% | 50.27% |
For all the talk of how impressive Trump's downstate numbers were (see above from me for example) Munger actually matched his performance in the downstate 96 counties. It was in the Chicagoland area that she did notably better than the top of her ticket, she ran 7 points better than Trump in Chicago, 9 points better in the Cook County suburbs and 10 points better in the collars. But in the end it wasn't enough, you can see that she just wasn't able to approach the numbers of Rauner's winning 2014 coalition.
Illinois Legislative Elections
In 2014 both Rauner and Topinka won by about 4 points and in the process Rauner got more votes than Quinn in 70 state house districts while Topinka got more votes than Simon in 69 state house districts. Tom Cross lost to Mike Frerichs by about a quarter of a point and still managed to get the most votes in 64 state house districts, even Jim Oberweis won 51 state house districts while losing to Dick Durbin by 10 points yet the House Republicans only held 47 seats.
Clearly in 2014 the House Republicans significantly underperformed their available political potential. With a massive investment of financial resources from the Governor and his wealthy allies the Republicans appeared poised to pick up a number of seats and move closer to realizing their potential. The open question was just how many, afterall 2014 was a national wave election for Republicans while 2016 was a mixed bag nationally and a strong Democratic year for Illinois statewide candidates. In the end the Republicans won 7 races and lost one. Some were low hanging fruit, they picked up retiring Sen. Sullivan's seat uncontested, they also won the seats previously held by Sen. Forby, Rep. Franks and Rep. Bradley, all seats that Rauner had won by more than 30 points just two years ago. They picked up Kate Cloonen's seat, she had won her last two races by 91 and 122 total votes, and this time around the Republicans had enough resources to make the difference winning by more than 7 points. Two years ago Jerry Long came within a point of upsetting Frank Mautino and this time around Long was able to beat his appointed replacement, Andy Skoog, by about a point. And the most impressive pickup came in northwest Illinois where Tony McCombie beat Mike Smiddy by about 25 points in a district Rauner only won by 14.
The end result was a net Republican pickup of 4 seats in the house reducing the Democratic majority to 67-51 and 2 in the senate reducing the Democratic majority to 37-22, which is still a supermajority in the senate.
Mike McAuliffe
The most impressive legislative victory wasn't a pickup, it was in the 20th House where Mike McAuliffe retained his seat by 12 points against a strong challenge from Merry Marwig. The spending in this race was unprecedented, McAuliffe was up on Chicago broadcast television in late August, unheard of for a state house race. It was an expensive retention but the margin was significant. McAuliffe actually did about 4.5 points better in the Chicago part of the district than the suburban part. And then there's this, these are the two precincts in Rosemont:
| Precinct | McAuliffe | % | Marwig | % | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leyden 12 | 621 | 82.91% | 128 | 17.09% | 749 |
| Leyden 38 | 176 | 67.18% | 86 | 32.82% | 262 |
| 797 | 78.83% | 214 | 21.17% | 1011 |
That's almost 600 votes of margin in just two precincts.
Tom Cullerton
The other impressive retention happened on the Democratic side in the senate where Tom Cullerton appears to have narrowly retained his seat despite a heavy challenge from Seth Lewis. It wasn't that long ago that suggesting Democrats could compete in DuPage County would get you laughed out of the room yet both Tom Cullerton in the Senate and Deb Conroy in the House have been able to win seats in this Republican stronghold and retain them.
Dwight Kay
Democrats had an impressive pickup as well beating Dwight Kay in the Metro East. Katie Stuart managed to upset the incumbent in this Madison County district despite the fact that Trump won the county by 16 points and incumbent Democratic County Board Chairman Alan Dunstan was defeated.
Other Observations
Southern Illinois
Take a look at this map of four state house districts under the previous map (2002-2011):
In the upper right district that goes from Effingham to Carmi it was once represented by Chuck Hartke, the district just west of that that includes Centralia and Mt. Vernon was once represented by Kurt Granberg. Just south of Granberg is John Bradley's district and just south of him is Brandon Phelps district. Once the Democrats lost the Hartke and Granberg districts those districts stayed Republican, the current map changed those two districts a bit but the Democrats don't really compete there anymore. The Bradley and Phelps districts are basically the same as the previous map but they have been trying to hang on in the face of this evolution taking place in southern Illinois. In 1994 when Jim Edgar beat Dawn Clark Netsch she lost all but one county and it wasn't Cook, it was Gallatin County in Southern Illinois. This year Trump won Gallatin county 72-24.
(For more on the changing political dynamic in both southern Illinois and the suburbs check out Charlie Wheeler's take in Illinois Issues.)
This cycle the Republicans beat John Bradley and Gary Forby (Forby's senate district is the combination of Bradley and Phelps). Rauner won all three of these districts by more than 30 points two years ago. Phelps managed to win his seat by about 16 points but the trend suggests that his district will be a target in future cycles. Not shown in the picture above but just to the west of these districts is the seat held by Jerry Costello Jr., a district that Rauner also won by more than 30 points. Costello was unopposed this cycle and was unopposed in 2014. Southern Illinois will be worth keeping an eye on in 2018.
Collar Counties
Of the five traditional collar counties only McHenry County remains reliably Republican in presidential election years (and even the McHenry County Board Chairman's race went Democratic this year when Jack Franks won it). Clinton, Duckworth, Obama 2012 and Obama 2008 all won DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will. As Charlie Wheeler pointed out in the article I linked to above the base of the Illinois Republican party is moving from the suburbs to downstate.
| County | Clinton | Duckworth | Mendoza | Obama 12 | Obama 08 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DuPage | 53.88% | 48.86% | 41.36% | 49.73% | 54.72% |
| Kane | 51.36% | 48.32% | 42.20% | 49.73% | 55.23% |
| Lake | 57.29% | 50.04% | 44.88% | 53.48% | 59.26% |
| McHenry | 42.69% | 41.39% | 35.02% | 44.68% | 51.91% |
| Will | 50.25% | 50.89% | 45.08% | 52.00% | 56.00% |
Chekhov's Gun
This cycle had two large infusions of cash. In the 114th House outspoken Republican candidate Bob Romanik loaned his campaign $2 million and he promised to use those funds to both win the E. St. Louis-based state house seat and to help other local candidates upend the local power dynamic. Despite those assertions it doesn't appear that Romanik pulled the trigger on that spending, he lost his house race by about 14 points and no other candidates reported receiving donations from him (traditional or in-kind) and he didn't report making any independent expenditures. For more background on Romanik scroll down to the St. Clair county section here.
The other large infusion of cash came on New Year's Eve 2014 when Bruce Rauner replenished his depleted campaign fund with $20 million and promised to spend that money to help his legislative allies who stuck with him on tough votes. As I pointed out back in August he kept that promise.
End of Campaign Finance Limits
Last, Illinois campaign contribution limits are now functionally dead. The laws remain on the books and the campaigns and committees will still have to take the legal steps to circumvent them but the participants are no longer trying to abide by the spirit of the law and with that damn now broke the limits are now just a nuisance rather than a deterrent. Even for proponents of campaign contribution limits lifting the limits wasn't necessarily a bad thing, that's what evened the playing field when either significant outside money or candidate personal/family funds entered the race. However limit proponents had hoped that public shaming would prevent committees from lifting the limits solely for the sake of lifting them, but that's exactly what happened and there was no public outcry. Meanwhile the Democrats learned how to circumvent the limits without having to lift them, creating numerous entryways by co-opting a significant number of the candidate committees in their caucus and then moving the money around as needed.
I remain skeptical that while Supreme Court rulings enabling unlimited personal spending and unlimited outside uncoordinated spending are the law of the land Illinois can enact campaign contribution limits that are both effective and fair but for this next cycle it's probably a moot point. We're unlikely to see any significant changes to campaign finance law, what changes are there that a) the Democrats would want to have pass both chambers and b) that the Governor would want to sign that would effectively limit the resources each wants and needs to fight the other in this upcoming election?
These links will have all my live data tonight:
| Statewide Races IL - President IL - US Senate IL - Comptroller | General Assembly Races Illinois State Senate Illinois State House |
What to Watch For
Final Early and Vote By Mail Totals
| Total Vote By Mail Applications: | 493,333 |
| Total VBM Ballots Returned: | 352,428 |
| Return Rate: | 71% |
| Total Early Voters: | 1,390,019 |
| Total Grace Period Voters: | 44,722 |
| Total Already Voted: | 1,787,169 |
| Total VBM Ballots Outstanding: | 140,905 |
With 140,905 outstanding vote by mail ballots any statewide race closer than that could still be affected by late arriving mail ballots. Also, keep in mind that the election authorities are no longer able to count the votes they already have, the early and mail votes, prior to the polls closing on election night. They used to get a head start counting those votes prior to 7pm, the Attorney General clarified that they cannot do that so in some of these jurisdictions those votes will get counted on election night along with the in-precinct votes and in others those votes will be counted tomorrow or in the following few days.
National
This seems like Trump's most plausible path to 270, it involves winning all of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Iowa, plus the available congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska. The eastern timezone states will probably tell us a lot early in the night.
If Trump is doing well he'll be in a position to win in FL, OH, NC and NH and will be competitive in MI and PA. If Trump wins either of MI or PA a number of paths open up, otherwise he pretty much has to run the table in the swing states.
If Clinton is doing well she'll be winning MI and PA and possibly NH. If she wins all three she probably wins (although she could substitute Nevada for New Hampshire later in the night too), if she wins any of FL, NC or OH it's hard to find a path for Trump and she probably has it locked down.
US Senate - Illinois
The best benchmark for this race is Kirk's last victory in 2010. That year was a strong Republican year while this year is not expected to be. Here are two things to keep an eye on.
Downstate - In 2010 the downstate 96 counties were especially strong for the Republicans. Kirk and Brady both got 59% of the vote. The Democrats rebounded in 2012, Romney only got about 53% of the vote there, but the Republicans came back strong in 2014 when Rauner took 61%. Can Kirk replicate the downstate Republican performance of 2010 and 2014 or will the Democrats improve as they did in 2012?
On the Democratic side there is some evidence to suggest that 2010 and 2014 were historically bad. In 2010 Quinn and Giannoulias both took 34% in the downstate 96 counties, same with Quinn in 2014. Even Carol Moseley-Braun took 37% in 1998 and Blagojevich got 40% in his 2006 re-elect, both were thought to be unpopular downstate. In 2004 Kerry took 45% and in 2000 Gore got 46%. The downstate 96 counties will probably make up about 38% of the total statewide vote so Duckworth doesn't necessarily need to hit the high water marks here, she just has to be better than the atrocious Democratic years of 2010 and 2014.
Suburbs (especially the northern ones) - in 2010 Kirk won his race by about a point and a half and Brady lost to Quinn by about half a point. Most of the difference came in the Cook County suburbs and the collars and most of that difference came in the northern end. Kirk had represented the north shore in Congress and those voters rewarded him in his Senate race. Kirk did about three and a half points better than Brady in the 5 traditional collar counties combined but it was even more pronounced in Lake County where the difference was six and a half points (56.6% to 50.1%). He's going to need to run just as strong in Lake County again to help his chances.
Tonight we won't have the township by township results in Cook County (I don't expect, they usually aren't available until morning) but we will have the results in the Cook County suburbs overall. Six years ago Kirk ran four points better than Brady (43.5% to 39.5%), he's going to need to do something similar to help his chances.
Comptroller
We haven't had much polling in this race, at least not recently, so I don't know what to make of this race. The external factors certainly favor the Democrats but the spending favored Munger. I'll probably keep an eye on this race relative to the 2014 State Treasurer's race where Frerichs just barely edged Cross.
The other thing to keep an eye on will be the totals by media market. Both candidates have been on TV but Munger has had more money to spend. It will be interesting to see if there were media markets where she was on TV and Mendoza wasn't and if that shows up in the vote totals.
Housekeeping
I'm going to turn off the system that runs live totals for all of the General Assembly races, each time those pages load the server runs all the calculations to pull the live totals. I want to keep the demand on the server light tonight so you can find a static copy of those current totals HERE.
Here are links to the pages that I plan to have live on election night:
| Statewide Races IL - President IL - US Senate IL - Comptroller | General Assembly Races Illinois State Senate Illinois State House |
The election night vote totals found on most media organization websites come from the AP. Illinois has 109 election authorities and each report their own vote totals independently, the AP has people gathering those totals from each authority and then providing the aggregate totals for each race. It is a massive and impressive service they perform.
For a number of years now I have wanted to buy access to that data but I cannot. It's not that I can't afford it, I always figured that whatever the price I could probably raise enough in sponsor money to meet the amount necessary but the AP just won't let me. They told me that they only sell access to their election night vote total data to news organizations and since I was not a news organization it was out of the question. I sent a snide response which made me feel better but doesn't change the outcome.
My only two options are: 1) round up enough volunteers to manually enter vote totals from every county all night, something I did in the 2014 primary but which I don't have the means to do again or 2) find the data I need from a news organization and then copy/paste that someplace where I can reformat it and run calculations on the totals, something I was able to do on general election night in 2014.
I've long been frustrated that on election night you can usually learn little more than who is currently leading and how many precincts have reported. Everyone has the same obvious follow up questions: 1) of the vote that has not yet been reported where is it and 2) of the vote that has not yet been reported who does it favor, by how much and is that enough to close the gap for the candidate that is behind? It's very rare that anyone attempts to answer those questions even if/when they have the means to do so and it's something I'd like to do.
If I can somehow find the county by county data I need on Tuesday night and figure out how to copy/paste it into my database that's exactly what I plan to do for the three statewide races (IL-President, IL-US Senate, IL-Comptroller). For the Illinois State House and State Senate races if I can figure out how to copy/paste those raw vote totals for each race into my database I'll have a tracker for each chamber that not only shows who is winning and by how much but also how each race affects the overall partisan makeup of each chamber.
The statewide race trackers include both county by county raw vote total as well as projected vote totals. You can find the results broken down by media market and region as well as all of the historical vote totals for each. The General Assembly results pages include a breakdown of of how many seats each party has won or is winning, how many of those wins are pickups and the current and new makeup of each chamber. It also has the races ranked by how much money was spent in each, the most expensive races are likely to be the ones that are the most competitive so that the races getting the most attention are likely to be near each other visually on the page, which will hopefully save some of that annoying scrolling up and down the page we always have to do on election night.
If you are a media organization preparing your election night coverage and you see anything here that you would like to incorporate or would find useful please take it, it's yours. If there is any information or calculations you have questions about please ask, glad to help. If you would like to return the favor by making the information I need available and showing me the format in advance I would greatly appreciate it. I always spend the 7pm hour scrambling to try to find the data I need and then get the copy/paste and calculations set up because I never know how things are going to look. Any time spent searching and coding is time that can't be spent analyzing and it's always a fire drill.
Hopefully I can get the data I need into my database and these trackers will prove pretty useful. If not, I tried, we're entirely at the mercy of others here.
At the end of the last three quarterly filing periods I ran the numbers and put together the fundraising totals for the General Assembly candidates, caucus committees, state parties and other relevant committees, for example here is last quarter's.
For Q3 though I'm not going to do that for two reasons 1) money is moving so fast and so much of it has already moved since 10/1 that those figures are way out of date at this point so it would be trivia more than data and 2) so much money in those totals that looks like funds raised or funds spent was neither, it was just funds transferred from committee to committee which creates artificially large numbers. For example, the Governor transferred $20 million to the Illinois Republican Party who spent some of that and transferred the rest to the House Republican Organization and the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee who spent some of that and transferred the rest to their member committees. If you start adding all of that up it may look like $40 or $60 million raised and spent when it was the same $20 million moving around. The only way to correct for that is to pull up every expenditure for the quarter and go through them one by one to exclude the ones that were just transfers, a labor intensive and time consuming task that's a poor use of time in mid-October of an election year.
I do plan to do that work after the Q4 filings are in so we can figure out a best estimate for what this whole process really cost, it just doesn't make sense to do that now with so much financial activity still ongoing. It will take some effort but we'll know in mid to late January next year.
In yesterday's installment, How the Money Moves, Part 2, the last thing I wrote was "Also, it's unlikely that this is our last unexpected development before the election. Stay tuned." It took less than 20 minutes for that to come true.
Last night the Governor's Independent Expenditure committee, Turnaround Illinois, filed a B-1 disclosing independent expenditures totaling $101,843.15 for radio ads supporting House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, who is unopposed this fall. When an IE committee makes independent expenditures supporting or opposing a candidate in a race in amounts greater than certain limits ($250,000 for a statewide race, $100,000 for all other races) the contribution limits are lifted for all candidates in that race. Section 5/9-8.5 (h-5) and (h-10) of the election code govern this process, neither specify that an opponent is necessary in order to lift the caps and I could find no other section of the election code that made an opponent a requirement to lift the caps. It appears that even though Leader Durkin is unopposed, this action will lift the caps in his race and his campaign committee will be able to raise unlimited funds for the rest of the year. As we've mentioned before in a general election candidate committees are allowed to make unlimited transfers to party committees who can then make unlimited transfers to candidate committees so leader Durkin will be able to transfer unlimited amounts to either the Illinois Republican Party or the House Republican Organization (HRO is registerd as a party committee) who can then spend or transfer that money in unlimited amounts on other legislative races as they wish.
Turnaround Illinois was created in April of 2015 by the Governor and his allies. Its chairperson is the CFO from the Governor's campaign and its treasurer is his campaign's chief legal counsel. Since inception the committee has raised $6.25 million, $4 million from former Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell and $2.25 million from Bruce Rauner's personal funds. The Governor spent the last few months touring the state in support of term limits which was accompanied by a television campaign, those TV ads were paid for by the Turnaround Illinois independent expenditure committee.
If the sole intention here was to lift the contribution limits for Leader Durkin they chose the more expensive of two available routes. The caps can be lifted either due to independent expenditure spending or self funding, Leader Durkin could have loaned his campaign $100,000 and then paid it back the very next day and those actions would have been sufficient to lift the caps in this race. However in this instance Turnaround Illinois spent $100,000 on radio ads supporting Leader Durkin, who is unopposed, so that $100,000 spent will likely have very little ancillary benefit.
This may be the most direct example to circumvent the contribution limits so far but it's probably not the strangest. In the 2015 Chicago Mayor's race William Kelly loaned himself $100,000 and filed a Notification of Self Funding which lifted the caps for the Mayor's race, but then he never even filed the paperwork to run for Mayor so the caps were lifted for a race he didn't even officially participate in.
If the contribution limits are lifted for Leader Durkin's campaign committee his would be the only one of the four legislative leaders' campaign committees that can raise unlimited funds, but this isn't the first time that has happened either. During the 2016 Democratic primary Speaker Madigan had three opponents for his 22nd district House seat. Former 2004 Democratic US Senate candidate Blair Hull and some of his wealthy allies funded an IE committee Illinois United for Change and that committee eventually made more than $100,000 in independent expenditures opposing Mike Madigan or supporting Jason Gonzales (their preferred candidate) and for the final two weeks of the primary Speaker Madigan's campaign committee, Friends of Michael J. Madigan, was legally allowed to accept unlimited contributions. The odd thing is that during those two weeks the Speaker did not receive any contributions that were above the standard contribution limits.
Update: The contribution limits for Leader Durkin have been officially lifted.
In the previous How the Money Moves I mentioned that it seemed likely Comptroller Leslie Munger would receive significant funding soon based upon how little financial activity her committee had shown up to that point. Since that time there were two key developments, neither unexpected: 1) Munger's committee received a loan of $260,000, enough to lift the contribution limits for this race, and 2) late last week she received $2 million from Richard Uihlein and $3 million from Ken Griffin, two of the Governor's wealthy allies.
Combined with the $280K Munger had on hand on 6/30 these new contributions gave her an estimated $5.5 million to spend in the homestretch of her campaign, much less than you'd typically see in a top ballot statewide race like Governor or US Senator but along the higher end for the other statewide constitutional offices. With her new ad on TV it was reasonable to assume that this money would be used to fund her fall budget.
However today there was an unexpected development, the Illinois Republican Party filed two A-1's (here and here) for transfers totaling $3 million from Munger to the State Party. Here are a few possible explanations:
It's possible that she is transferring this money to the State Party to fund a mail budget. State Parties pay a lower postage rate, that's why you so often see General Assembly candidates file A-1's with in-kind contributions for mail from the State Party. However in this case this seems somewhat unlikely, she's already up on TV with her ad and $3 million seems like an awfully large mail budget. It's very common for statewide campaigns to have mail in addition to TV, especially in those media markets where the candidate isn't up on TV, but usually not at this level or at this proportion.
It's possible that in order to keep staffing costs low she's outsourcing some of her campaign activities to the State Party, where some of the Governor's top political staffers are employed, and she's transferring part of her budget to their control. If that's the case this transfer would seem like an unnecessary step, her campaign and the State Party are allowed to fully coordinate strategy and tactics and her campaign committee could have easily paid any campaign expenditures that were needed.
Another very likely possibility is that her campaign committee is being used as an entryway to get unlimited contributions into the system where that money can then move freely around to be spent on other races. I discussed the need for entryways in my previous post. The House Dems have had a number of large donors, particularly in labor and legal, who are willing to contribute more than the maximum amount so they've had to break up those contributions into the amounts permitted by contribution limits and then contribute those amounts to as many Democratic affiliated committees as necessary to get all the money in the system. In a general election candidate committees can make unlimited transfers to party committees and party committees can make unlimited transfers to candidate committees so once that money is in the system the candidate committees with surplus funds can either transfer those funds to their fellow candidates up to the limited amount or they can make unlimited transfers to their party committee where the funds can then be redistributed in unlimited amounts to other candidates in need.
However in this case the contribution limits are off for the Comptroller's race because of the $260,000 loan Munger received from her husband. Munger (and Mendoza) can accept contributions in unlimited amounts and if they so choose they can then make unlimited transfers to the party committee who can then spend or transfer unlimited amounts on other candidates, such as targeted general assembly races.
Prior to last week the Governor had been almost single-handedly funding the Republican legislative effort. The only other significant pool of money was in the Independent Expenditure committee Liberty Principles PAC which had raised $5 million since June, $2.5 million from Governor Rauner personally, $1.5 million from Richard Uihlein and $1 million from Ken Griffin. However the funds in the IE committee are somewhat walled off, independent expenditure committees are not allowed to transfer funds to candidate or party committees so if these donors wanted to use their money to help legislative candidates they could only do so by making expenditures independently. But now that the contribution limits have been lifted in the Comptroller's race they can make direct unlimited contributions to Munger who can then transfer that money to the party as needed and it can be put to use elsewhere.
Just because Munger transferred $3 million to the State Party today doesn't mean she won't get additional financial support later to supplement her campaign budget, she may still very well spend $5.5 million on her fall effort if additional contributions are received. Also, it's unlikely that this is our last unexpected development before the election. Stay tuned.
As you know I download the State Board's data files every night. In most cases my data is current as of 9pm the night before. Usually the way this works is that the State Board makes a copy of their data available every night at 9pm and puts it on their FTP server and sometime around 2am my server copies those files and runs an update that lasts about 30-60 minutes and that's how I display my data.
However the SBE also has a new filings list and makes that available in XML. I've been pulling each of those new filings and testing that download for a while now. For example this is the same page as their new filings page but with totals.
I've set it up so that my server now updates all of this data in real time. When it reads an A-1 or a B-1 it updates the data files with that info. So for example, last night Dale Fowler filed this A-1 at 10:59pm which is well past the 9pm cutoff (usually) for my data. Normally it would take a day before that showed up in my files (actually 2 because the SBE update doesn't run on Saturday nights). Instead now it shows up right away in his financial profile and the race totals are also up to date. The only thing I can't update in real time are D-2's, in theory I could update the totals but I can't get the itemized contributions and expenditures until I get those data files so it's not worth pinging the SBE server so many times for so little benefit.
I tested this for a week before I put it live so I'm hopeful that this is working correctly but we're coming up on the end of the quarter and the election isn't too far away so it's important to get things right. Please, please, please, if you see any errors or mistakes please let me know right away so I can correct them. There's no worse feeling than getting facts wrong, I'm not that bright and I need all the help I can get.
Thank you
Prior to Illinois contribution limits taking effect in January 2011 the four legislative leaders raised as much money as they could into their own personal committees and often a caucus or party committee and then each legislative candidate raised what they could in their own candidate committees and that's how you could track the legislative elections.
But now with the contribution limit law in place the process is much more complicated. Our contribution limit law doesn't actually limit the amount of money that comes into our political system, since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision there probably is no fair way to design a law that would effectively limit the money, but our Illinois law is still in place so in order to move money through our system first the money has to come in through a much more complex but still legal process. Here's an explanation for how the money entered the system and is now moving through it for General Assembly races this cycle.
Much of the Republican effort is being funded by the Governor. Of the $16,924,996 raised so far this cycle by the Illinois Republican Party $16,071,600 has come from either the Governor personally, his wife or his campaign fund, Citizens for Rauner.
| Committee | Cycle Total | From Rauner | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois Republican Party | $16,924,996 | $16,071,600 | 95% |
Most of that money is being passed through to the two Republican caucus committees, the House Republican Organization (HRO) and the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee (RSSCC).
| Committee | Cycle Total | From State Party | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| House Republican Organization | $11,257,997 | $10,095,000 | 90% |
| Republican State Senate Campaign Committee | $3,585,919 | $2,193,000 | 61% |
| Combined | $14,843,916 | $12,288,000 | 83% |
Only about $2.5 million of the roughly $14.8 million that the two Republican caucuses have received this cycle came from donors other than the State Party. The two caucus leaders each have their own candidate committee Citizens for Durkin ($1,452,457) and Citizens for Christine Radogno ($958,754). So for the 2016 cycle the combined total donations for the State Party, HRO, RSSCC, Citizens for Durkin and Citizens for Christine Radogno comes to about $16 million from Rauner and about $5.8 million from all other sources, this is an operation largely funded by Rauner with probably much more to come.
Most of the Rauner money came via his campaign committee Citizens for Rauner, and most of that came in just a few large donations. During the 2014 election Bruce Rauner had personally contributed enough money to his own campaign to lift the contribution limits in the Governor's race and that exemption from limits remained in effect until December 31st of that year. On 12/31/14 he filed this A-1 which included a $10 million contribution from himself, $8 million from Ken Griffin and $2 million from Richard Uihlein and his year end report showed his campaign fund with a balance of $20.2 million heading into the start of the 2016 cycle.
Starting in January of 2015 Rauner's campaign committee could no longer accept unlimited donations from donors like Griffin and Uihlein but he was still able to personally contribute unlimited sums and doing so did not lift the caps for the upcoming Governor's race because it is still more than 12 months before the next gubernatorial election (5/9-8.5 (h)). So far this cycle Rauner has personally given his campaign committee $2,550,000 in cash plus another $200,000 in-kind for data analysis, also he did refund himself $300,000 as well.
In a general election candidate committees are allowed to make unlimited transfers to party committees, and vice versa. The Illinois Republican Party, HRO and the RSSCC are all classified as party committees so Citizens for Rauner can legally transfer as much as it would like to any of the three during this general election period and then those party committees can contribute unlimited amounts to any of their other allied candidates either through direct transfers or in-kind contributions. Citizens for Rauner started the cycle with $20 million in the bank and added over $2 million more and has already transferred $16 million to the Illinois Republican Party to fund this legislative effort. While it's barely even Labor Day much of that money is already being spent on legislative campaigns.
| District | Candidate | Party | State Party | Leadership | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rep-20 | Michael McAuliffe (i) | R | $28,005.00 | $915,898.06 | $943,903.06 |
| Sen-31 | Melinda Bush (i) | D | $0.00 | $463,981.42 | $463,981.42 |
| Rep-62 | Rod Drobinski | R | $30,771.00 | $427,847.44 | $458,618.44 |
| Sen-31 | Mike Amrozowicz | R | $55,554.00 | $402,968.70 | $458,522.70 |
| Rep-71 | Tony McCombie | R | $19,160.12 | $434,298.81 | $453,458.93 |
| Sen-23 | Seth Lewis | R | $54,672.00 | $393,895.52 | $448,567.52 |
| Rep-62 | Sam Yingling (i) | D | $31,182.51 | $369,243.20 | $400,425.71 |
| Sen-59 | Gary Forby (i) | D | $0.00 | $400,330.49 | $400,330.49 |
| Rep-111 | Mike Babcock | R | $17,938.32 | $374,536.55 | $392,474.87 |
| Rep-76 | Jerry Long | R | $35,874.00 | $274,660.00 | $310,534.00 |
| Rep-112 | Dwight Kay (i) | R | $54,501.60 | $232,852.99 | $287,354.59 |
| Sen-38 | Sue Rezin (i) | R | $40,006.00 | $246,459.60 | $286,465.60 |
| Rep-45 | Christine Winger (i) | R | $54,655.00 | $223,693.08 | $278,348.08 |
| Rep-61 | Sheri Jesiel (i) | R | $18,173.61 | $208,395.60 | $226,569.21 |
| Sen-59 | Dale Fowler | R | $15,890.76 | $204,942.62 | $220,833.38 |
| Sen-23 | Thomas Cullerton (i) | D | $0.00 | $216,759.30 | $216,759.30 |
| Rep-95 | Avery Bourne (i) | R | $61,398.53 | $147,514.04 | $208,912.57 |
| Rep-115 | Terri Bryant (i) | R | $63,028.69 | $137,951.81 | $200,980.50 |
| Rep-117 | David Severin | R | $0.00 | $199,010.39 | $199,010.39 |
| Rep-56 | Jillian Bernas | R | $31,569.00 | $155,628.82 | $187,197.82 |
This table shows the top 20 races (as of 9pm Sept 6th) for funding that has either come from the state party or a leadership committee and 16 of the top 20 are Republican campaigns. Lots of money, lots of early money is being funneled to Republican legislative campaigns already.
You'll notice that of the four Democrats listed above only one is from the House despite the fact that far more of the contested races are in the House, that is not an accident. The way the Democrats are managing their money is quite a bit different, especially in the House.
You might expect that since the Dems couldn't match the $20 million in unlimited donations Rauner received on New Year's Eve 2014 and don't have his personal wealth they can't match the Republicans this cycle but as of the last quarterly filings that's actually not the case. The combined June 30th cash on hand for all the Democratic committees was about $36 million compared to about $32.6 million for the Republicans (including the Rauner funds). On the Democratic side the money isn't as consolidated in leadership, at least not yet. Of the four committees controlled by the Speaker (Democratic Party of Illinois, Democratic Majority, Friends of Michael J. Madigan and 13th Ward Democratic Organization) the combined 6/30 cash on hand was $7.8 million. The three committees Cullerton controls (Illinois Senate Democratic Victory Fund, Citizens for John Cullerton for State Senate and Committee to Support John Cullerton for State Central Committeeman) had a combined 6/30 cash on hand of $5.7 million.
But where the real cash advantage lies for the Democrats is in the individual candidate committees. Not including leadership Democratic Senate candidate committees had a combined 6/30 cash on hand of $5.6 million, compared to just $1.7 million for Republican Senate candidate committees. In the House the Democratic candidate committees had an eye popping combined 6/30 cash on hand of $13.4 million compared to $5.6 million for Republican candidate committees. Again, those figures don't include the four legislative leaders.
For the most part the Democrats didn't have the ability to receive unlimited funds into one committee the way Rauner did (there are some exceptions to this statement that weren't utilized, like this one, I won't bore you with the details) so instead they had to get the money into their political system through as many entryways as possible. For the Democrats much of that took place in the 4th quarter of 2015. The Democrats focused heavily on their allies in labor and the legal community to raise large sums and when those donors could not give any more to leadership they gave to various candidate committees, particularly those that appeared to be likely targets for 2016 and especially in the House. In Q4 2015 (link is for a downloadable spreadsheet) not including the four legislative leaders 19 Democratic General Assembly candidate committees raised over $100K (14 House, 5 Senate) compared to only one Republican Jil Tracy ($105K). Some of those prolific fundraisers, like Lou Lang ($132K) and John Bradley ($523K), are statehouse veterans who have worked on many issues and have had the opportunity to build numerous allies over the years so it isn't necessarily surprising to see them with strong fundraising numbers. However many of the others are relative newcomers and it's clear that the vast sums of money they were raising probably weren't solely the result of their own efforts.
In the days before contribution limits the individual candidate committees were largely under the control of the individual candidates themselves. At times they may have been given direction by leadership and they were certainly asked to kick in and help the caucus when they could afford to do so (like the Republicans just recently did), but they still largely had financial control over their own committees. Under this new model it appears that some of the House Dems, the targets in particular, have given up that independence for more of a team approach. Each of these candidate committees that are sitting on large cash balances can make unlimited transfers to leadership if those funds aren't needed it seems likely that leadership will instruct them to do so. It's a model that offers these targeted candidates some peace of mind knowing that, if necessary, funds from elsewhere will be shifted to help them in their races and it gives leadership control over a much greater pool of funds, and in a contribution limit environment each fund is an additional entryway.
The Republicans are spending their money earlier than the Dems this cycle, even in the races where you can compare apples to apples that is no doubt true. But it's also true that you're seeing more financial reporting on the Republican side because the way the Republicans and Democrats are moving the money is different and those methods have different reporting requirements. For example, when Rauner transfers money to the State Party he won't have to disclose that expenditure until the next quarterly report is filed on 10/15 but the State Party has to disclose receiving that contribution within 5 business days so we see that transaction. Then when the State Party transfers those funds to a caucus committee the same scenario applies and the same when that caucus committee transfers it to a candidate. However on the Democrats' side much of that money is already in the individual candidate committees so any expenditures those candidate committees make won't be disclosed until 10/15 when the 3rd quarter filings are due. In some of the most hotly contested races, like the four that appear in the table above (Yingling in the House; Bush, Forby and Cullerton in the Senate) the Democratic leadership has already started spending there and we are seeing those transfers or in-kinds, elsewhere it's happening under the radar.
Soon the Democrats are going to start consolidating their funds into leadership. In the House you'll likely see transfers from some of the flush campaign committees that don't appear to have much of a race, in the Senate you'll likely see the same from some of the more financially secure members that aren't on the ballot this cycle. It's only a matter of time and I'm surprised we haven't seen some of it already.
I'm surprised by how little financial activity there has been in the Comptroller's race. It's not one of the traditionally prominent statewide offices but because of the circumstances this year it's been given far more attention than usual.
On June 30th Democrat Susanna Mendoza reported $1.3 million on hand but has reported only $39,000 since. Republican Leslie Munger had a June 30th cash on hand of $282K and has raised only $16,000 since. When Munger raised $111K in the 2nd quarter of 2015 it was the only time this cycle that she raised six figures, many General Assembly candidates are outraising her.
Mendoza will need quite a bit more money than she has so far. Looking at Frerichs 2014 as a comparable, he raised about $2.5 million in 2013 & 2014 and put about $1.6 million of that on TV, including buying $1.1 million worth of TV time in late August which were likely advance payments for airtime later in the cycle. We are already past late August, she has some catching up to do if she wants to run a campaign similar to what Frerichs ran.
It's hard to tell what Munger is going to do but it doesn't appear that she's going to raise money the old fashioned way. Perhaps she has some personal wealth that she's waiting to put in, perhaps she has a commitment from the Governor for a large sum, perhaps she's expecting that some outside groups will spend enough to lift the contribution limits and then a handful of deep-pocket donors will kick in large sums or perhaps it's a combination of the three. There must be some plan because you can't run statewide on $282K, you can't really even run a competitive House race on that little anymore.
Because it's easier to move unlimited sums around in a general election and the battle lines are more clear there is much less of a need for Independent Expenditure committees in the fall, but that doesn't mean we won't see any. Personal PAC has added $125K to their IE since June 30th when they had $580K on hand. The Governor's IE, Turnaround Illinois, had $2.2 million as of June 30th. And Liberty Principles, the conservative IE that played a big part in Republican primaries, has added $1 million to the $4 million they reported on June 30th.
We know what Turnaround Illinois is going to be used for. It has been paying for the Governor's commercials on term limits that you have been seeing on TV since the Olympics. Despite his odd protestations to the contrary the Governor has been travelling the state campaigning on this issue and using his IE to pay for the corresponding TV ads.
It's less clear what Liberty Principles will be used for. Since June they've received $2.5 million from Bruce Rauner personally, $1.5 million from long time benefactor Richard Uihlein and $1 million from Rauner ally Ken Griffin. All that money must have some purpose but so far they haven't shown their hand. Maybe it will be used to supplement the Rauner/State Party money in General Assembly races, maybe it will be used to help Munger, maybe it will be used to reach the threshold to lift the contribution limits in key races so Rauner and other wealthy allies can pour in even more money or maybe it's for some other purpose we haven't even thought of yet. Whatever it is it will have to be done independently, the one rule that emerged from the Citizens United ruling is that they cannot coordinate with the candidates and according to state law these funds are now walled off and cannot be contributed to other candidate committees, party committees or PACs.
Follow along on our Twitter feed and you will be able to see all of the above play out in real time.
On New Year's Eve 2014, after winning election but prior to taking office, then Governor-elect Rauner replenished his nearly depleted candidate committee, Citizens for Rauner, with $20 million. The Governor put in $10 million of his own money and also received contributions of $8 million from Ken Griffin and $2 million from Richard Uihlein. Here is what one Rauner advisor told Crain's Greg Hinz at the time:
"There are a lot of legislators who he is going to be asking to make a lot of tough decisions," said one Rauner insider who asked not to be named. "The intent is to build a large and effective political operation in order to pursue his agenda." Some of the money may be donated directly to legislators' campaign committees and other funds spent on their behalf. TV ads, polling and other activity on behalf of Rauner policies also is expected, the insider said. And the war chest only is "the first in a series," part of a "multipronged effort" in which other funding vehicles will be formed, the source said. "This is the tip of the iceberg."
Since that time the Governor has personally contributed another $2.75 million to his campaign fund and with an expected contested re-election campaign looming many wondered just how much of that money he would spend on General Assembly races versus how much he would save for 2018. It's only August but the answer is already clear, the Governor will spend most or possibly all of that money to help elect fellow Republicans.
Because of campaign finance limits the Governor's campaign committee cannot transfer unlimited sums to Republican General Assembly candidates directly, however during a general election candidate committees, such as Citizens for Rauner, are allowed to make unlimited transfers to party committees, such as the Illinois Republican Party, and Rauner has done just that. Yesterday Citizens for Rauner transferred another $5 million to the Illinois Republican Party bringing the total to just over $16 million for the 2016 cycle. Rauner's campaign committee, which started 2015 with about $20 million in the bank is now down to just around $5 million remaining. It's probably a sign of the times and the record amounts of money involved that we can casually use the phrase "just around $5 million remaining".
And while the Illinois Republican Party has spent some of that money directly, for example they've had about a half million in in-kinds and about $1.4 million in independent expenditures for Republican candidates this cycle, most of the money is being transferred to the two General Assembly Republican leadership committees: the House Republican Organization (HRO) and the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee (RSSCC). Already HRO has received a little over $9 million from the Illinois Republican Party and just this morning the RSSCC received another $500K bringing their cycle total to about $1.7 million. So between in-kinds, independent expenditures and transfers to the two leadership committees the state party has already moved or spent $12.6 million of the $16 million they've received from Rauner, and remember the most recent transfer of $5 million from the Governor to the state party happened just yesterday.
Campaign funds are not the Governor's only contribution to this effort. The Governor has promised the "biggest ground game ever" for legislative races this fall. Back in May the Governor personally paid $200K to Crowdskout, LLC, a data management and marketing platform. This expenditure was likely for a data enhancement on the Republican voterfile to allow for greater voter demographic targeting, something the Democrats and the Obama campaign in particular had received extensive attention for in the past.
On a number of occasions the Governor has promised to transform the party and make Illinois Republicans competitive again but oddly enough the other day when asked about his significant contributions this cycle and his involvement in winning more seats for Republicans in the General Assembly he told reporters "I'm not too involved in local races." The Governor's occasional odd comment notwithstanding, he promised to contribute significant resources for party building and so far he's kept that commitment.
