Preckwinkle purges — sheds $33,000-plus in campaign cash linked to Ed Burke soirée

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has purged $33,250 from her campaign coffers, the last remaining contributions that her team tracked down from a fundraiser hosted by embattled 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke.

Nine contributions were returned in April, May and June ranging from $250 from Citizens for Accountability to $20,000 from the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers’ Local Union 130, according to a disclosure report that was filed Monday with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Scott Kastrup, Preckwinkle’s political director, said the campaign reached out to people whose checks hadn’t been cashed and reissued some of them to make sure “everyone who wanted their money back got their money back.”

Some declined to take the money back. That money, estimated at a few thousand dollars, will be donated to four charities: Response Now, South Suburban PADS, Ford Heights Community Service and the Black Ensemble Theater, Kastrup said.

Preckwinkle was tied to the veteran alderman earlier this year, when it was revealed in a 37-page criminal complaint that Burke leaned on a pair of Burger King franchise executives to attend a fundraiser for her.

She vowed to give back the $116,000 from that fundraiser. Though Preckwinkle was not accused of wrongdoing, the allegation stymied the Hyde Park Democrat’s bid to succeed former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and became part of her opponents’ attacks on her record and ability to run the city.

A senior adviser to Preckwinkle previously told the Chicago Sun-Times that the fundraiser, held at Burke’s Southwest Side home in January 2018, was “the result of a friendship between Preckwinkle and Burke’s wife, Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke” and their “shared passion” for criminal justice reform.

That comment dragged Justice Burke into the fundraiser fallout. Jeffrey Orr, the son of former Cook County Clerk David Orr, filed a complaint with the state’s Judicial Inquiry Board, arguing that that adviser’s comments “implicated Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke in potential violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct.” Justice Burke was later cleared in that complaint.

Despite the loss in the mayoral race to Lori Lightfoot, Preckwinkle announced late last month that she would be seeking a fourth term at the helm of the county.

“When I decided to run for mayor I realized there were a lot of things I still wanted to do,” Preckwinkle said. “I think there’s a lot of good work that I can still do.”