How Bruce Rauner used a legal loophole to get a $2.5 million campaign donation
From the Chicago Reader
The GOP nominee for governor was allowed to accept a huge gift from billionaire Kenneth Griffin.
by Ben Joravsky @joravben and Mick Dumke @mickeyd1971 | June 18, 2014
In 2009, just months after Governor Rod Blagojevich was impeached, the General Assembly rewrote the state’s campaign finance laws in order to end what was widely known as the “wild west” era of unregulated political contributions, when money was thrown around like confetti.
“The people of Illinois have demanded reform,” new governor Pat Quinn said at a press conference upon signing the legislation. “It is a crucial and important move in the right direction.”
Yet five years later the richest man in the state was able to donate $2,500,000 to a friend who happens to be one of the wealthiest people ever to run for statewide office.
That’s not a typo with extra zeros. Last week hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin gave a single $2.5 million donation to Bruce Rauner, the Republican nominee for governor. The gift is on top of the $500,000 Griffin gave Rauner earlier this spring and another $505,000 he pitched in before the March primary. Griffin has also let Rauner use his private jet, a gift worth tens of thousands of additional dollars.
Ironically, the latest donation has left Quinn—Rauner’s opponent—lambasting the return of the wild west financing that the law was supposed to eradicate.
As Griffin and Rauner have demonstrated, the state’s campaign finance laws allow wealthy candidates and their friends to buy their way out of the rules that were supposed to put a lid on money in politics. It’s called the millionaire’s amendment, and it’s a loophole big enough that you can drive a truck loaded with $100 bills through it.
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