A former political consultant whose allegations of sexual harassment against a longtime aide to House Speaker Mike Madigan highlighted the treatment of women in Illinois politics has created a new political action committee with the goal of helping the state “elect more ethical and accountable elected officials.”
Alaina Hampton on Wednesday launched the Majority Justice Movement PAC — just five days after ComEd was charged in federal court with bribery in a bombshell case that implicates several people, including Madigan, though no one else has been criminally charged. Madigan has denied any wrongdoing.
“What we’ve seen over the course of the past several years or honestly for my entire lifetime is that we don’t have very many elected officials in the state of Illinois that are willing to hold corrupt politicians accountable, and I think the rest of Illinois deserves more transparent and ethical leadership,” Hampton said Sunday.
“What I’d like to do is help fund candidates and elected officials that are willing to have a little more intermittence from the machine-style politics that we see here in Illinois,” she continued. “And what that means is helping them learn how to fundraise so they don’t have to rely on directed funds from large corporations such as ComEd.”
Hampton first thought of creating this PAC last year after she learned that lobbyists paid Kevin Quinn after Madigan fired him. In a 2018 lawsuit, Hampton accused Quinn of harassing her with a barrage of unwanted texts and phone calls in pursuit of a romantic and sexual relationship and sought damages for alleged retaliation, claiming her career suffered after she came forward with the allegations.
But when she saw the ComEd news, Hampton, who settled her lawsuit last November, decided to expedite the process.
Starting this week, Hampton said she’s going to call the lobbyist who paid Quinn $30,000 and ask them to donate the same amount of money to this committee. She also said she plans to call legislators who’ve benefited from ComEd donations over the past year.
“I think perhaps that some elected officials will see that giving the ComEd money away as perhaps not admitting to guilt but that’s not something that I see,” Hampton said. “I think a lot of people didn’t realize how corrupt the situation was, I think it gives them an opportunity to give that money to an organization that’s going to help elect more transparent leaders. That money [was] literally . . . robbed residents of Illinois and it needs to be used to help Illinoisans rather than helping their own election bids.”
