Normal mayoral candidate Kathleen Lorenz says she’s been transparent about an unusual $28,000 campaign contribution funneled through the McLean County Republicans. Her candor also could be what gets her in trouble with the State Board of Elections.
A board official said Monday he doesn’t remember ever seeing a case like this before — in which a candidate [Lorenz] admitted to coordinating with a donor to funnel a donation to her campaign through a political party committee [the McLean County Republicans]. By doing so, Lorenz and the donor circumvented campaign-finance laws that limit how much a single person can give and require everybody to disclose what they did.
“I’m not aware that we’ve ever had that admission upfront, so this may be an unusual case from our perspective,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesperson for the State Board of Elections.
A more common scenario, he said, is that a candidate’s opponent files a complaint with the State Board of Elections alleging that something like this happened, leading to an inquiry and a possible penalty if it’s verified. In this case, Lorenz told WGLT she did it.
Lorenz is running against incumbent Chris Koos and fellow town council member Chemberly Harris in Tuesday’s election.
Last week, Lorenz received $28,000 from the McLean County Republicans. Hoping to clarify that the money did not constitute a GOP endorsement, Lorenz told WGLT on Saturday she coordinated with the donor to route the money through the McLean County Republicans — at the donor’s request.
Lorenz said the “ridiculous amount of money” was critical to paying for three weeks of advertising during the homestretch of the campaign, adding that advertising gave her a better chance to win against the favored incumbent Koos.
Lorenz would not identify the donor, but she confirmed the $28,000 she received from the McLean County Republicans last week came from him. The Republicans have not identified the donor either, although on Feb. 20 they received $29,200 in contributions from Greg and Heather Shepard of Lakewood Ranch, Florida, election filings show. The Shepards split that into two $14,600 contributions, one in each of their names, records show; $14,600 is the maximum that an individual can give to a political party committee like the McLean County Republicans.
Greg Shepard is Koos’ cousin. It’s unclear why Shepard would be funding a candidate running against his own cousin, if he’s indeed Lorenz’s donor.
“I appreciate all the financial support received throughout the campaign,” Lorenz said Sunday. “I am proud of the way the campaign has been run. Everything has been done with the highest level of integrity and transparency which is why people know about the donation!”
Dietrich pointed to a specific part of state election code he said “could be problematic” for Lorenz’s situation. It says “no person shall make an anonymous contribution or a contribution in the name of another person, and no person shall knowingly accept any anonymous contribution or contribution made by one person in the name of another person.”
The entire campaign disclosure structure is intended to encourage transparency, Dietrich said, so voters know who is giving to the candidates who appear on their ballot.
“We want to avoid cases where a contributor could give to Committee A with the intention of that committee then passing that contribution on to some third-party — a committee or an individual candidate or whatever the case may be,” Dietrich told WGLT.
No one has filed a complaint against Lorenz as of Monday morning, Dietrich said. If that happens, the case would be assigned a hearing officer and go through a formal hearing. After staff prepares their recommendations on their findings, the State Board of Elections would formally hear the case. If the board determines there was a violation, Dietrich said a penalty might be requiring the candidate to give the money back — the “overage” that would have exceeded the individual contribution limit.
It's also possible that State Board of Elections could order its staff to initiate its own complaint.
The State Board of Elections should ask Lorenz to give the money back, said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, a Chicago-based research and advocacy organization that promotes integrity, accountability, and transparency in politics.
“We have campaign-finance laws to prevent corruption,” Kaplan told WGLT. “We want to make sure that elected officials are acting in the best interest of the public, that they’re not trading favors in exchange for big donations. You want to look to see if candidates and donors are following the spirit of the law, in addition to the letter of the law.”
Illinois’ campaign-finance laws are stronger now than they were, say, 15 years ago when there weren’t even contribution limits, Kaplan said.
“They’re still like Swiss cheese. They’re full of loopholes. And that can allow money to flow to candidates in ways that can undermine the real purpose of the laws. And this might be one of those cases,” Kaplan said.
This loophole is certainly one that’s been exploited before, but Kaplan said it's not known how often.
“Because as long as the candidate or the donor doesn’t admit that that’s what they’re doing, it wouldn’t be that easy to tell. You could just have donors making contributions to a party committee, and behind the scenes the instruction is for that donation to go to the candidate,” Kaplan said. “When neither the candidate or the donor admits that’s what they’re trying to do, this could happen a lot, and we wouldn’t know.”
As a result, there aren’t a lot of examples of candidates getting penalties for this kind of conduct, Kaplan said.
Typically, an individual is capped at $7,300 in contributions to a candidate campaign committee like Lorenz’s, based on state contribution limits. However, individuals can give larger sums to political party committees like the McLean County Republicans, and there is no limit to how much political party committees can give to candidate campaign committees.
Others use the loophole, too. Kaplan said legislative leaders in Springfield, for example, take in big donations and then give them to political party committees that distribute money to candidates they support in amounts that would not otherwise be allowed.
“So using party committees as this kind of pass-through entity is not all that uncommon,” she said. “What’s different about this case is that someone has admitted that that’s what they’re doing, and that the donation to the party committee was specifically intended for them.”
Kaplan said just because a candidate gets a big donation doesn’t mean they’re corrupt.
“They still very well may do what they think is right. But it does raise the question of who they’re serving and why,” she said. “When they make a policy decision, are they serving this big donor, or a group of big donors, or are they serving the public? The idea behind campaign-finance laws is that the public shouldn’t even have to question an elected official’s motives.”
The election is Tuesday.
