A complaint has been filed with the State Board of Elections against former Normal mayoral candidate Kathleen Lorenz, alleging she violated campaign finance laws by accepting a $28,000 contribution from a donor who funneled the money to her through the local GOP.
A State Board of Elections spokesperson on Friday confirmed the complaint was received. It was submitted by Ben Matthews of Normal. He volunteered for Normal Mayor Chris Koos’ re-election campaign, but said he didn't have a formal position. He’s also a committee chair for the McLean County Democrats.
The complaint alleges that Lorenz and her campaign violated two specific provisions of state election law. One prohibits the giving or receiving of a campaign contribution in someone else’s name. The other limits how much an individual person can donate to a candidate — typically $7,300.
When asked for comment Friday, Lorenz said she had not been notified of the complaint by the State Board of Elections.
The complaint is based largely on Lorenz’s own words, including an interview with WGLT just three days before the election. Lorenz came up about 470 votes short. Koos won his sixth term.
Lorenz told WGLT the $28,000 she received from the McLean County Republicans was actually pass-through money from a single donor who wanted to support her campaign. Lorenz said she coordinated with the donor to route the money through the Republicans — at the donor’s request. She said she needed the money to fund campaign advertising in the final weeks of the campaign.
She would not identify the donor, though records suggest the donor is Greg Shepard, a businessman and landowner who is Koos’ cousin. Shepard and his wife donated $29,200 to the McLean County Republicans a few weeks before the GOP sent $28,000 to Lorenz’s campaign.
By doing so, Lorenz and her donor appeared to circumvent campaign-finance laws that limit how much a single person can give and require everybody to disclose what they did. One potential reason: Individuals can give larger sums to political party committees [like the McLean County Republicans] than they can individual candidates, and there is no limit to how much political party committees can give to candidates. It’s a known loophole in state election law.
Matthews’ complaint also includes screenshots from Facebook, appearing to show Lorenz saying that “sometimes donors at significant giving levels prefer to give through a third party such as a party committee or a PAC.”
“What occurred, by the candidate’s own admission, appears to clearly violate the campaign finance law’s contribution limits and rules against accepting anonymous donation,” the complaint said.
Now that a complaint has been filed, the next step will be a closed preliminary hearing between the two parties and a member of the State Board of Elections’ campaign disclosure staff serving as hearing officer. That will probably happen in early May.
After that hearing, the hearing officer will write a report and recommendation that is forwarded to the board’s general counsel. She then reviews it and makes a recommendation to the full board, which hears the case in executive session at a monthly board meeting [probably June 17 but maybe later] and issues its decision.
If the board determines there was a violation, a penalty might be requiring the candidate to give the money back — the “overage” that would have exceeded the individual contribution limit.
