Seizing on the licenses-for-bribes scandal that funneled tainted cash into Gov. George Ryan’s campaign for governor, the six candidates vying to replace him have elevated ethics and campaign finance reform to a high-profile issue.
But while they’re talking the reform game, none is willing voluntarily to play by the rules they say they want to impose–at least not this election. Given Illinois’ current anything-goes approach to campaign finance, no candidate wants to create a playing field that tilts against him.
That attitude was vividly highlighted last week when Democrat Roland Burris reported accepting more than $1 million from companies controlled by communications executive Joseph Stroud. Burris advocates limiting contributions from businesses in campaigns for governor to no more than $7,000 per company.
To be sure, candidates who have previously sought to impose limits or to restrict donations from special interest groups have seriously handicapped their campaigns. Some believe that Glenn Poshard, the Democrats’ unsuccessful nominee in the 1998 governor’s race, badly hurt his chances by refusing to take campaign cash directly from political action committees.
Although no candidate will say he or she is against ethics reform in government, their views vary widely on how best to cope with undue special influence and the role that money plays in political campaigns.
State Sen. Patrick O’Malley (R-Palos Park) is the only candidate for governor in either party who declined to sign an ethics pledge offered by the Illinois Campaign Reform Coalition, a group that includes the League of Women Voters of Illinois.
O’Malley said he agreed with some of the group’s proposals but said others don’t go far enough. And, in a shot at Republican rival Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, O’Malley said he would seek his own power to appoint special prosecutors “if the attorney general’s office fails to do its job” to root out corruption.
Illinois has no limits on donations to a candidate or on what a candidate can spend. Further, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that candidates are free to pump as much of their personal wealth as they wish into their campaigns.
One of the first candidates to push an ethics reform plan was Republican Corinne Wood, who was elected lieutenant governor in 1998 on a ticket with George Ryan. Wood has been actively trying to disassociate herself from her one-time political mentor as part of her campaign to replace him.
Wood, who along with her husband put $1.33 million in family funds into the campaign, is the only Republican to support placing limits on donations.
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She would restrict them to $2,500 per election. She also would require candidates to refund or give to charity any excess funds in their campaign war chests once an election is over.
Atty. Gen. Ryan, another Republican contender, said he would consider limits on donations, “but not if it unfairly allows the rich only to run for public office. I don’t think people want to have only the rich in public life.”
O’Malley said limiting donations would be a violation of the constitutional right to self-expression.
He also contended that campaign contribution limits “serve as incumbency protection and as a barrier to entry to all but the wealthy to pursue public service.”
O’Malley, a wealthy lawyer whose family has invested heavily in his campaign, also said candidates who are able to largely self-finance their efforts “can rightly be perceived as not beholden to special-interest groups.”
Among the Democrats, Burris supports donation limits in campaigns for governor of $2,000 for individuals and $7,000 for PACs and businesses. But he also wants to put curbs on campaign spending, limiting candidates for governor to no more than $2 million in a primary race and $5 million in a general election.
Another Democrat in the race, U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich, said he would work with established good-government groups to set proper limits on donations to “ensure that candidates receive financial support from a broad base of individuals, rather than a few wealthy contributors or organizations that may win undue influence.”
But former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas, another Democrat, said limits on campaign donations “present certain constitutional questions that need to be resolved” before he could offer his support.
Vallas and Blagojevich said they would bar state workers from soliciting campaign contributions from people who work under or from businesses they regulate. Vallas called such contributions a “prima facie compromise of ethical principles.”
Burris said state workers have a “constitutional right to support the candidates of their choice.”
Ryan would continue the current governor’s executive order preventing elected officials from receiving contributions from their employees. O’Malley and Wood said they have not and will not solicit dollars from state workers.
All six candidates support, at the very least, reinstatement of the state’s 1998 Gift Ban Act. The law, enforcement of which has been blocked in court, was the first comprehensive attempt to limit gifts lavished on lawmakers by lobbyists and to create an ethics infrastructure in government.
Wood voted for the law as a legislator and wants to see it re-enacted, while Ryan and O’Malley support an even tougher gift ban law. Burris and Blagojevich call for disclosure of and a ban on material gifts worth more than $50 a year from a single entity.
Vallas goes a step further, saying that state workers who leave their jobs should be required to wait at least one year before being allowed to take a job with any private firm they dealt with while on the government payroll.
All of the candidates except Burris support more frequent public disclosure of campaign contributions, with O’Malley going the farthest in proposing “real-time continuous reporting” of donations and their posting on the State Board of Elections Web site.
Burris thinks the current system is sufficient.