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The state Board of Elections on Wednesday denied a request to reconsider or reduce a fine of more than $100,000 levied against a political action committee that helped expand the Democratic majority on the Illinois Supreme Court.
The board’s bipartisan unanimous vote was at the request of All for Justice, an independent spending PAC backed by Illinois Senate President Don Harmon. Elizabeth Rochford after the organization was fined $108,500 by its board of directors for failing to timely submit detailed spending reports when it spent $7.3 million on election aid last year. and Mary Kay O’Brien will be sent to the state Supreme Court in 2022.
The fine was one of the highest ever imposed by the Election Commission.
Shortly after the first fine was imposed in August, the PAC transferred the remaining $149,516 to a long-dormant political committee, the Chicago Independence Alliance PAC, and emptied its bank account. Both PACs share the same address of a law firm headed by attorney Luke Casson, who previously worked for Harmon and is also listed as chairman and treasurer of the All for Justice PAC.
The bulk of All for Justice PAC’s spending came as a result of improper reporting in the Supreme Court race, a race that flipped one Republican seat and ultimately gave Democrats a 5-2 majority on the court. , which was closed to the public until a few months later, at the end of January 2023. general election in November.
All for Justice’s spending accounted for a quarter of the more than $23 million total spent on the two state Supreme Court races and nearly $40 million of the amount spent on the two winning Democratic candidates. %. The board initially took action following a Tribune article last year detailing flaws in PAC’s report.
Mr. Casson was an attorney who attended the board meeting, and attorney Adam Vought told the board that he had been appointed as the PAC’s representative less than a week earlier. Vought claimed that some of the fines were duplicates and included coding errors.
But Tom Newman, the commission’s election disclosure officer, told directors that “there was no double reporting or double assessment” of the fine, saying the fine was based on “actual independent expenditures” made by the PAC. The law was imposed “appropriately.”
Mr. Vought offered a promise to settle the unpaid fines for $30,000 and shut down the All for Justice PAC. But board chairwoman Cassandra Watson asked Mr Vought: “Has a significant amount of money been taken away and sent to another committee?”
Vought initially told the board he was “a little in the dark about how much money is available” before confirming that all of the PAC’s money had been transferred. When asked if the two PACs “have the same players,” Vought and his roommate Casson said, “We don’t know.”
“My problem is I don’t have the money to settle,” Watson said. “So how do you solve this if you don’t have the money?”
Casson then spoke up and said, “We intend to present a credible settlement proposal.” So Watson said to Casson: The court reporter doesn’t know who you are. And it doesn’t recognize you at the moment. ”
The eight-member board, made up of four Democrats and four Republicans, ultimately voted 8-0 to deny the PAC’s request and leave the fine in place.
All for Justice’s funds were transferred to another PAC, but in August, when the board first imposed the fine, it issued a “personal liability” to PAC officers for civil penalties if the PAC “loaned or donated.” He cited a provision in the Administrative Regulations that imposes the burden of “. It funds a second political committee but pays fines to the state election board.
Mr. Casson is the only board member of the All for Justice PAC, according to state election records. Mr. Casson also served as an outside advisor to the Office of the President of the Senate, Mr. Harmon, and was the political director of the Oak Park Democratic Party, Mr. Harmon’s political base. Mr. Harmon donated a total of $700,000 to the PAC from two political funds he controlled.
In a separate roll call, the Election Commission announced a 20,000 levy against another independent spending political committee, the People Who Play by the Rules PAC, which is chaired by a right-wing radio talk show host. The court voted 8-0 to suspend the $5,500 civil penalty. and Florida political operative Dan Proft.
Mr. Proft’s PAC issued timely reports on expenditures exceeding $1,000 when it ran ads supporting unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey and opposing Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in the fall of 2022. He was charged with multiple violations of failure to file.
In an email response to the board in December, Proft said he was not informed of the fine assessment in August. However, the commission said that certified mail tracking showed the evaluation was delivered on August 9 and had “fallen into the hands of an individual.”
Both Mr. Proft and the legal counsel for his campaign committee, which received significant funding from conservative national mega-donor Richard Uihlein, owner of the office supplies company Uihlein, rejected his request to reconsider. He did not appear before the board in support.
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