Illinois partisan politics formally undermined a staff finding that state Senate President Don Harmon’s political fund violated campaign contribution limits last year, as state election authorities dropped a proposed fine of nearly $10 million against the Oak Park Democrat.
For its second straight meeting, the eight-member Illinois State Board of Elections, composed of four Democratic appointees and four Republicans, remained split along party lines over whether to accept the recommendation of an impartial hearing officer who upheld the determination that Harmon’s main fundraising arm violated campaign contribution limits that Harmon himself had championed as a state lawmaker.
Prompted by a Chicago Tribune inquiry into the Friends of Don Harmon for State Senate campaign committee, elections board staff in June determined Harmon’s fund had accepted more than $4 million in contributions above what was legally allowed ahead of last year’s election.
The matter was left in limbo last month, when the board was unable to reach the five-vote majority needed to either accept the hearing officer’s recommendation and levy staff’s proposed $9.8 million fine or reject it. When it came back before the board on Tuesday, the split remained. All four Democratic appointees voted to reject the staff’s findings and the proposed fine, and all four GOP members voted to approve the findings and levy the fine.
This time, though, both the attorneys for the elections board and for Harmon’s campaign committee agreed on one thing.
“As far as I’m concerned, this case is over,” Marni Malowitz, the board’s general counsel, said after two votes that made members’ positions clear.
“Agree,” said Harmon’s attorney, longtime Democratic Party lawyer Michael Kasper, who spent much of the board’s deliberation standing with his hands folded in front of him and his head bowed.
To underscore the finality of the outcome despite the repeated tie votes, the board, in a separate measure, voted to remove the case from its docket. The board also voted to determine that it lacked jurisdiction over constitutional issues raised in Harmon’s campaign fund’s appeal.
“We’re pleased to have this matter finally behind us and to focus all of our energy on solving the real problems facing Illinoisans every day,” Harmon’s political spokesman, Tom Bowen, said in a statement.
Noting that the hearing officer and board staff agreed a violation occurred and a steep penalty was warranted, Senate Republican leader John Curran of Downers Grove said the outcome “undermines accountability and further erodes the public’s trust.”
“When the facts support a major violation, the rules should be enforced — no exceptions,” Curran said in a statement.
While the case brought by elections board staff is over, the underlying issue may live on in a separate challenge filed last week with the board by the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian-leaning legal organization with Republican ties. Because the new challenge is a citizen-initiated complaint, it could allow the matter to move to court. The previous case could only have gone to court if the board had levied a fine and Harmon’s committee had appealed.
At the heart of the issue is whether Harmon’s political fund violated campaign contribution limits under a law he co-sponsored in 2009 in the wake of the scandal that brought down disgraced former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Out-of-control fundraising from state contractors and others who had business before his administration was a major part of the case against Blagojevich, who was later sentenced to 14 years in prison before his sentence was commuted and his conviction pardoned by Republican President Donald Trump.
As Illinois began to set up a process to limit how much politicians can raise, one concern that was raised was how to ensure the playing field was level for candidates facing wealthy opponents who can fund their own campaigns. The answer lawmakers, including Harmon, came up with was to establish a so-called self-funding threshold that allowed candidates to collect unlimited contributions if anyone seeking the same office — themselves or an opponent — exceeded the threshold.
But that answer created a loophole that many politicians took advantage of to raise as much political cash as they wanted. In Harmon’s case, he contributed $100,001 to his own campaign in January 2023. It was precisely $1 over the contribution threshold that allowed him or anyone else running for his Senate seat to accept unlimited funds for that race. In campaign paperwork, Harmon indicated he thought the move allowed him to collect unlimited cash through the November 2024 election cycle.
Board officials informed him, however, that the loophole would only be open through the March 2024 primary, meaning campaign cash he received from some contributors between the March primary and the end of the year exceeded the limits.
Even though Harmon wasn’t a candidate last year, his campaign fund continued collecting contributions in excess of the limits through the November general election.
Kasper later argued that the fundraising limits should have been off at least that long, if not through the March 2026 primary, the next time Harmon’s Senate seat will appear on the ballot. The longer period would create parity between state House candidates, who run every two years, and Senate candidates, whose seats are up for election on staggered two- and four-year terms, Kasper argued.
The hearing officer who heard the case in August, Northbrook attorney Barbara Goodman, rejected those arguments in a 15-page recommendation last month, finding that both the “plain language” of the law and the past practices of Harmon’s campaign fund indicated “the committee for the first time either changed its interpretation of the time period for the lifting of the contribution limits or simply chose to ignore them.”
The $9.8 million in penalties proposed by the board staff included a payment to the state’s general fund equal to the more than $4 million election officials said Harmon raised in excess of the contribution limits, plus a nearly $5.8 million fine calculated based on 150% of that same amount.