In a political season dripping with superlatives, the soiree at the Hotel Allegro and Cadillac Palace Theatre on Randolph one breezy evening last month was dubbed the Democratic Party’s Biggest Fundraiser Ever In Chicago. In a single night, Chicagoans, bedecked in their evening finest, threw down $2.2 million.
What they got in exchange that night varied greatly with how much they paid to get in.
For those paying $100 each, there were red, white and blue plastic hats reading “Vote Democratic,” a crowded ballroom and drinks served in plastic cups at the cash bar. Those who paid $5,000 each got a smaller crowd in another ballroom where some of Chicago’s political heavyweights, including Mayor Richard Daley and Jesse Jackson, mingled.
Only those who paid $25,000 got a chair. And real drinking glasses. They also got to rub shoulders with Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee for president, and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
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Chicago is a money tree that has blossomed in the past two decades, producing an ever-increasing crop of cash.
The city, of course, favors Democrats. But Republicans also squeeze money from the Loop and have kept pace with Democrats by milking the Republican suburbs and rural areas elsewhere in the state. The two parties almost evenly share the $44.1 million Illinois has already pumped into the current campaigns.
The main force behind the surge in fundraising is a new, more aggressive cadre of political money men–like Rahm Emanuel, co-chairman of the Allegro event–who think nothing of approaching contributors who once gave $5,000 and telling them they can afford $25,000.
“What has happened over the last 10 or 12 years is Chicago has been playing a bigger role in national fundraising than it had in prior years,” said Emanuel, a former top White House aide to President Clinton who earned his political stripes as one of Daley’s most aggressive fundraisers.
With encouragement from fundraiser-in-chief Clinton and the national Democratic Party, frontline money men such as Emanuel and Daley fundraiser Joe Cari are squeezing Chicagoans as never before and generating bigger and bigger jackpots like the seven-figure take at the Allegro.
While party fundraisers have been reaching out to a wider and wider circle of would-be contributors, they also are putting additional pressure on their most reliable and generous benefactors. At smaller parties and dinners in Lincoln Park, Highland Park, Lake Forest and elsewhere, those who give the most are being asked for more.
Last spring at the Lincoln Park home of businessman Fred Eychaner and his partner, Ken Lee, Clinton had dinner with about 100 people around tables decorated with silver bowls of yellow and white roses. The president spoke for about 30 minutes.
The event raised $850,000 for the committee helping Democratic Senate candidates. Eychaner alone has given $561,000 to the party this campaign cycle.
Political fundraising in Chicago is a confluence of money and politics, business and society that thrives and grows even as more and more Americans–and now even the candidates themselves–decry the potentially corrupting influence of money in politics.
Illinois companies and individuals have already poured millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, supporting candidates, parties and political action committees, and are expected to write checks for millions more as the presidential race enters the home stretch. Thousands give. Yet a small number of individuals and corporations dominate the political cash flow in the state even as they deny that they expect anything in return for their ever-growing contributions.
Some, such as Lou and Ruth Weisbach of Highland Park, who have given more than $470,000 to Democratic candidates, are wealthy philanthropists who see politics as an extension of their charitable works. Others, such as Lyle Campbell, chairman of Peotone Bancorp, who has given about $335,000 so far to Republican causes, say they are making contributions for ideological reasons.
Most of those who attend fundraisers like the one at the Allegro write much more modest checks to the candidates and parties and see a campaign contribution as entree to a social scene, not unlike a gallery opening or cancer benefit.
“Some of these people just like the action. It’s like gambling for them,” said Joe Novak, a former aide to J. Patrick Rooney, founder of Lawrenceville, Ill.-based Golden Rule Insurance Co. Rooney has given $190,045 to the Republicans and $15,250 to the Democrats.
“It’s like rock ‘n’ roll and being backstage,” Novak said. “Your friends are impressed because you have pictures [with the politicians] on your walls.”
Many large checks written by companies and executives, however, have far more to do with business than with pleasure, campaign watchdog groups say.
Archer Daniels Midland Co. of Decatur, Caterpillar of Peoria, Deere & Co. of Moline, United Airlines of Elk Grove Township, and AT&T are among Illinois’ biggest givers.
These companies, and others, have billions of dollars at stake in the worlds of telecommunications, airline travel, agriculture and exportable heavy machinery, and all are prompting Uncle Sam to clear the way for their wares or fending off the federal bureaucracy that could encumber their operations.
Some companies give to one party; others give to both. All of those contacted denied that their campaign checks are intended to buy access or favorable treatment on a particular matter.
Their lobbying reports, however, show that many of them are at the same time spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each to influence legislation in Washington that ranges from the global (free trade with China) to the arcane (tax deductions on corporate-owned insurance plans).
Deere & Co. has used its lobbying dollars to push for an increase in the budget of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. By the bank’s own count, it has helped 293 Illinois companies in 120 communities export $3 billion in goods and services. Fifty-one of those companies are in Chicago.
So far, the bank has provided loan guarantees that led to the purchase of $391 million in Deere equipment overseas in the past few years, including a $187 million guarantee that allowed the company to sell 1,049 farm combines in Ukraine. Caterpillar and other suppliers got a $60 million loan guarantee to send diamond-mining equipment to the same region.
Political fundraising long has been a part of life in Chicago, a town well-known for its machine politics and City Hall patronage.
But it was not until the post-Watergate years, with new restrictions on campaign finances, that the national Democratic Party began looking for ways to mine the Loop more deeply. Fundraisers at the homes of prominent Chicago citizens became more common.
In the past 25 years, the scene has evolved. The circle of donors has grown, and the national party’s aggressiveness has intensified, peaking in the last few years as Clinton’s fundraisers began courting the business community, previously ceded to Republicans.
The party at the Allegro was for Democrats, but the Republicans have collected millions from Chicago and Illinois as well. Former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, are up next with a fundraiser here Sunday to help their son, Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush.
Of the $44.1 million Illinois has given in the 2000 campaign, Democrats got $19.8 million and Republicans $24.3 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign-finance watchdog group. Only five other states give more to Democrats. Just six give more to Republicans.
Not surprisingly, Democrats get most of their money in the city, and most of that from the Loop and Lincoln Park. The GOP dominates elsewhere.
In the five collar counties around Chicago, from 57 percent to 84 percent of the contribution checks written in each county go to Republicans. Lake Forest, Winnetka and Hinsdale are the most generous to the GOP.
The names on many of the political checks leaving Chicago are the same ones that have long been circulating in the city’s business, civic and charity circles. Democratic givers include Lewis and Susan Manilow, the driving force behind the Museum of Contemporary Art, who have given $87,300; Neil Bluhm of JMB Realty, a major benefactor of Northwestern University’s law school, who gave $180,000; and Penny Pritzker, heir to a family hotel fortune, who gave $110,000.
People who do business with Mayor Daley also open their wallets to the national party, including Elzie Higginbottom of East Lake Management and Development Co., who gave $82,000, and Niranjan Shah of Globetrotters Engineering, who gave $50,000. His employees kicked in $9,000.
One major campaign donor, R.R. Donnelley & Sons, is typical of the corporate contributor that has myriad interests at stake in Congress and before federal agencies. The company has given $165,000 to Republicans. A spokesman said the firm gave Democrats about $30,000.
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Donnelley is one of the U.S. Postal Service’s biggest customers and has taken an interest in congressional efforts to overhaul the post office. It also has sought Defense Department printing contracts and has lobbied on various bills, according to lobbying reports.
One of the company’s most critical federal issues is a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over allowable deductions for corporate-owned life insurance programs.
Donnelley spokesman Kevin Richardson said there is no connection between the contributions and the company’s interests in Washington.
“We do not link contributions to specific issues,” Richardson said. “We really do view this as an essential part of our civic leadership.”
Several executives said their contributions were made for philosophical, not business, reasons.
Campbell, the chairman of Peotone Bancorp, said he gives to the GOP because he believes in individual initiative and limited government intrusion. He said there is no connection between his giving and the idea of building a third regional airport in Peotone, a project over which the federal government would hold some sway.
“I have been involved in helping Republicans all my life. There’s nothing very sophisticated here,” Campbell said. “It has nothing to do with the airport. Zero. I am actually opposed to the airport. I don’t think it is needed.”
In addition to contributing on behalf of their individual interests, many also help underwrite joint lobbying efforts that increase their clout in Washington.
Tribune Co., owner of the baiduhai, gave a total of $55,000 to Democrats and Republicans through Tribune Broadcasting, its television subsidiary. The National Association of Broadcasting, whose donors include executives at television stations owned by the Tribune, gave $102,000 to Republicans and $94,000 to Democrats.
Tribune is challenging a 1975 federal restriction prohibiting newspapers from owning television stations in the markets where they circulate. The matter is pending before the Federal Communications Commission.
Tribune Broadcasting would not comment on its donations.
Many of Illinois’ largest companies joined a coalition that launched what has been called an unprecedented lobbying effort by U.S. business to permanently normalize trade relations with China.
More than 200 companies banded together to form the Business Roundtable and funneled $85 million to candidates through political action committees and individuals, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
AT&T was the biggest contributor at $4.1 million. United Airlines gave $650,446, Caterpillar gave $403,000 and Deere & Co. gave $197,000.
All of the firms see the Chinese market as an opportunity for hundreds of billions of dollars in business.
President Clinton signed the trade pact Oct. 10.
Recent criticism of fundraising focuses on whether donations buy influence, and the runners-up in the primaries–Republican Sen. John McCain from Arizona and Democrat Bill Bradley, the former senator from New Jersey–forced the issue to the forefront.
Bill Brandt of Winnetka, who said he spends an hour each night on the phone raising money for the Democratic Party, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate bid in New York, knows how suspicious many Americans are of the motives of big-buck contributors like him.
“If you are in the arena you are going to take a lot of heat,” said Brandt, who spent a night at the White House after giving $100,000 to the party.