Mayor Lori Lightfoot raised $2.7 million during the second quarter of this year, spent $1.3 million and still has $1.8 million in cash on hand to scare off opponents of her ambitious legislative agenda.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this month that Lightfoot closed out the month of June with a flurry of fundraisers that allowed her to accept contributions in big chunks before fundraising caps lifted for the mayoral race were reinstated July 1.
In that final rush, Lightfoot scored a $125,000 contribution from Donald Wilson Jr., CEO of DRW Holdings, and raked in $100,000 more from three of the company’s top executives.
The Laborers Political Education Fund gave the new mayor $200,000 while the Chicago Regional Carpenters kicked in $25,000. Both trade unions were among Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s biggest supporters in Round One of the mayoral sweepstakes.
The UA Political Education Committee gave Lightfoot $50,000. The Association of the Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry, which was also was heavily in Mendoza’s corner, gave $50,000.
The International Union of Operating Engineers contributed $50,000.
The quarterly report also includes a parade of hefty donations previously reported by the Sun-Times. They include:
• $150,000 from former Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell and the billionaire’s wife, Helen.
• $110,000 from John Canning, chairman of Madison Dearborn Partners, one of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s most frequent donors.
• $100,000 from the SEIU Illinois State Council. SEIU, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s biggest donor, is now backing Lightfoot for, among other things, her support of a fair workweek ordinance and a $15 minimum wage.
• $100,000 from financier and philanthropist Lester Crown, who backed Bill Daley in Round One of the mayoral sweepstakes.
• $100,000 from businessman Michael Sacks and his wife, Cari. Sacks was Emanuel’s biggest donors and one of the former mayor’s closest advisers. He is an investor in the Sun-Times.
• $50,000 apiece from: James Perry of Madison Dearborn Partners; the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399 Political Fund; Craig Duchossois, CEO of the Duchossois Group and State Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago).
The Duchossois family, along with Churchill Downs, operates Arlington International Racecourse in Arlington Heights.
• $40,000 from retired executive Peter Phillips.
• $25,000 each from the United Food and Commercial Workers union; the Carpenters Union; Judd Malkin of JMB Realty; Patrick Nash of Kirkland & Ellis LLP; philanthropist Mary Jo Schuler and from top executives of Exelon, led by CEO Christopher Crane.
City Hall has just begun the exhaustive process of renegotiating Exelon’s soon-to-expire 20-year franchise agreement with the city and is eyeing a much shorter deal — perhaps five or 10 years, according to Fleet and Facilities Management Commissioner David Reynolds.
Since taking office May 20, Lightfoot has taken fundraising trips to Los Angeles and New York City — with stops to have dinner with Oprah Winfrey and to appear on Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show.
While headlining a Palm Springs fundraiser for former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s PAC in a town with an all LGBTQ City Council, Lightfoot prospected for her own donors among California’s upscale gay community.
Those contacts are expected to pay off handsomely in the future for Chicago’s first openly gay mayor.
But Chicago’s movers-and-shakers have already lined up so squarely behind Lightfoot, it allowed the new mayor to repay the $250,000 loan she made to her own campaign with interest and still have a substantial war chest to play with.
Dave Mellet, Lightfoot’s full-time political director, has portrayed the mayor’s decision to keep fundraising and maintain a political office at 100 W. Kinzie St. staffed by two full-time employees as par for the course in Chicago politics.
Emanuel never did it, but his vast Rolodex and infamous fundraising muscle allowed him to raise vast sums of money on a dime.
“The campaign fund has paid the remainder of the expenses that we incurred, in the run-off election especially. And any money beyond that will be used to further the mayor’s agenda. Our goal is to help the mayor do what she needs to do to pass important legislation . . . and help move Chicago forward in the next few years,” Mellet has said.
“It will help the mayor when she needs to reach out to people and ask for support on certain agenda items or wants people to be aware of what’s going on with legislation or things that need peoples’ voices involved in the process.”
During the first quarter of this year, which included her mayoral campaign, Lightfoot raised $4.6 million and spent $4.4 million. She closed the quarter with $397,480 in cash on hand.
