Over a year in office, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign coffers still buoyed by unions

Since his election as mayor of Chicago in April last year, Brandon Johnson has raised $2.6 million, nearly half of which has come from a variety of labor organizations — some of them key backers from his election campaign, others that came around afterward.

The progressive first-term mayor’s continued reliance on union support is no surprise after his campaign was mostly bankrolled by major labor groups such as the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union — two organizations whose leaders retain close access to the mayor, per his public schedules and text records.

But an analysis of his political campaign’s receipts show increasing variety among his labor backers and an overall broadening of his political fundraising sources, including a large check from a Grammy-winning rapper with ties to Chicago.

Of the $2.6 million in political contributions Johnson has pulled in since being elected mayor, $1.2 million came from unions, according to quarterly filings due last week. He had about $2 million on hand at the end of last month, compared with $576,000 just before winning the April 4, 2023, runoff.

Johnson, who beat opponent Paul Vallas despite being outspent nearly 2-to-1 , also raised more funds since he took office than his predecessors did in about the same time period.

Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot raised about $2 million between winning the 2019 runoff election and a little more than a year after she was inaugurated. And Rahm Emanuel raised just $360,000 in the year-plus after his 2011 victory, though he had a whopping $2.7 million on hand when he easily won the election, and had the ability to quickly turn on his fundraising machine.

Since the April 2023 runoff, Johnson’s labor fundraising has diversified to feature prominent support from more moderate trade and industrial unions, according to an analysis of his latest batch of state campaign finance records. During the mayoral race, nearly all his union donations came from the left-leaning CTU, SEIU and affiliates.

New Johnson mayoral donors include the Laborers’ International Union of North America’s local chapter and the Mid-America Carpenters’ union, each contributing $200,000 shortly after he got elected. The two are tied as his top donors since the runoff. This June, the mayor celebrated a LIUNA trainee program with Chicago Public Schools, while earlier that month he hosted the carpenters’ regional council at City Hall, according to Johnson’s calendars, which the Tribune received through public records requests.

The business manager for Laborers’ Local 1001, which represents city sanitation and maintenance workers, publicly blasted Johnson’s administration last month for the botched handling of hundreds of workers’ checks.

It’s not uncommon after a candidate’s political star ascends. Lightfoot picked up LIUNA’s endorsement in the 2019 runoff after the key trade group spent heavily in support of Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who got knocked out in the first round of mayoral voting. That contribution was Lightfoot’s single biggest during her runoff against Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle.

After LIUNA and the carpenters union, Johnson’s biggest union backer since the runoff was the CTU, whose PAC kicked in $111,643 — a $75,000 contribution last June and several in-kind contributions for canvassing, videos ads and phone banking that were logged in the weeks following the runoff. During the election, the labor organization was Johnson’s top financial backer, contributing $2.3 million by the April runoff. That doesn’t include other affiliated teachers unions who also contributed to Johnson’s run.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Illinois PAC gave Johnson $105,000 soon after the runoff and later hosted him for a convention in August. None of the three trade unions donated to Johnson during his mayoral campaign, which kicked off in late October 2022.

The teachers union — where Johnson rose through the ranks as an organizer before running for county commissioner — has a notable amount of direct access to the mayor. That access comes with perks, as the Tribune reported last month after learning the mayor’s letter to Illinois Senate President Don Harmon vowing not to shut down selective enrollment schools was directly edited by a CTU lobbyist.

From his May inauguration through June of this year, Johnson’s public schedule included a dozen events or meetings with the firebrand labor group’s leadership or at its headquarters. Johnson has had four meetings with CTU President Stacy Davis Gates at City Hall, his daily books show.

The mayor’s 2023 cellphone texts, though generally sparse, show Davis Gates was the union leader he messaged with the most. But he also corresponded with SEIU Healthcare Illinois’ Vice President Erica Bland-Durosinmi as well as Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter.

SEIU Healthcare’s political committee contributed $48,000 in the quarter following his runoff victory. Bland-Durosinmi appears four times in the mayor’s schedule, while union President Greg Kelley does once. The umbrella organization, which donated $4.5 million to Johnson’s mayoral campaign, appears eight times in the mayor’s schedule, including one meeting at City Hall with SEIU’s state council.

Since winning the mayor’s seat, Johnson has seen a name outside of Chicago’s usual political world crop up as one of his biggest financial backers: the rapper Lil Durk.

Durk, a Chicago native whose real name is Durk Banks, contributed $150,000 in June 2023 shortly after meeting with Johnson twice. He ranks as Johnson’s third-biggest political donor since the April runoff.

Before the donation made via his company, The Voice Touring, Durk met with Johnson when he was mayor-elect and another time over Zoom the Friday after his inauguration, per social media and mayoral calendars. The first meeting was featured in hip-hop blogs and by podcaster DJ Akademiks in an Instagram post, leading Durk to defend himself against criticism that he was using the opportunity to market his upcoming album.

“I done sat with the mayor and politicians, I’m tryna change the image,” he raps in “All My Life,” a Grammy-winning song released days after the first meeting, ahead of Johnson’s inauguration.

Johnson last August also attended the rapper’s “Financial Literacy Event” with Bank of America and city Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin’s office as well as a “Lil Durk Holiday Event” in December.

On the expenditure side, one recurring controversy has been Johnson’s growing hair and makeup bill. The local business Makeup Majic has ranked fifth in all of his political fund’s costs and racked up $32,700 in costs since he became mayor. Before that, he paid the South Side artist Denise Milloy $4,000 throughout the mayoral race.

A total of 40 receipts to Milloy’s business are recorded in Johnson’s expenditures since his inauguration. Though the mayor is recorded as the beneficiary each time, Milloy only appears 17 times on his daily schedules. Johnson’s campaign did not respond to a question about whether he was paying for services for others.

Johnson does not have many corporate and large business donations compared with his predecessors, likely a reflection of his stridently pro-worker positions that have left him frequently at odds with the business community.

Lightfoot, by contrast, received several large campaign infusions from the city’s business leaders shortly after clinching the mayoralty in 2019. That included DRW Holdings CEO Donald Wilson, real estate investor Sam Zell and his wife, Helen, and Lester Crown. Lightfoot would later count Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts and Newsweb founder Fred Eychaner as top donors.

One major exception for Johnson is the political action committee Leaders for Tomorrow. Run by Austin-based GMA Construction Group founder Cornelius Griggs and GMA vice president and general counsel Erica Kirkwood, the PAC has donated $74,000 to Johnson since the April runoff. The firm has done city business in the past, and Griggs last month was tapped to serve on the mayor’s “Cut the Tape” initiative task force.

The PAC also donated a total of $124,100 to Lightfoot in 2022 and 2023.

Another PAC created by Ashlaur Construction CEO Zollie Carradine, whose firm is an active city contractor, contributed $50,000 to Johnson’s fund in September.

Johnson previously refunded a donation from Griggs’ daughter, Kyla, after a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found several donations from business interests violated the city’s ethics rules. In all, Johnson has refunded $72,602 in contributions, campaign records show, including more than $10,000 in this most recent quarter.

The city’s ethics ordinance limits companies to a $1,500 donation cap if they have more than $10,000 in city contracts in any consecutive year (within the last four years), but donations via PACs are far more complicated, according to Steve Berlin, longtime executive director of the city’s Board of Ethics.

The board would have to probe the facts to determine whether a PAC could be considered “a single person” under the city code, Berlin said. The PAC could be covered by those limits if the board determines the company has a high degree of control of it.

Corporate donations via PACs might also be subject to the contribution limits if any PAC transfers more than half of its annual receipts to a particular elected official or candidate in the same calendar year. Anyone who contributed to that PAC, in that case, “would be deemed to have contributed to the candidate in the amounts they contributed to the PAC,” Berlin said.

Asked about this quarter’s refunds and whether those PAC donations exploited a loophole in the city code, campaign spokesman Jake Lewis said, “Our campaign is proud to have the support of donors across Chicago and the nation, and we work diligently to ensure compliance with all state and local campaign finance laws and regulations.”

Alisa Kaplan, executive director for the ethics advocacy group Reform for Illinois said the board should probe both issues.

“Chicago limits campaign contributions from city contractors for good reason: to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. Contractors should not be able to use PACs or any other loophole to get around those limits,” Kaplan told the Tribune. “The city needs to aggressively enforce existing rules meant to prevent quid pro quos, but they also need to tighten the rules.”

Company executives are not subject to that $1,500 cap. They can donate up to $6,900. Kaplan said that’s a problem too. The mayor and City Council “need to stop stalling” and close that loophole, she said.

Political groups that have donated to Johnson since his election include $7,000 from the Asian American Midwest Progressives and $47,400 from the Mijente statewide. The mayor also got $49,000 from the United Working Families PAC, a CTU-affiliated political organization whose former executive director, Kennedy Bartley, was tapped to join the Johnson administration this spring.

Grassroots PAC, run by the executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice, Marcos Ceniceros, has given $75,400, while the North Side-based One People’s Campaign contributed $3,200.

ayin@chicagotribune.com

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