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Connecting the Cash
Where do your political contributions go?
After sifting through thousands of expenditures from political committees, we found some pretty interesting spending habits. We went ahead and broke it down for you...where do your political contributions go, after all?
We studied spending by all committees from October 1, 2015 to the present.
Transfers to other political committees top the expenditures list, with a total of $28.8
Million spent.
There were a few high profile transfers, including $1.8 Million from Turnaround Illinois to Liberty Principles PAC, and $975,000 from IllinoisGO to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce Super PAC.
Citizens for Rauner recently transferred $900,000 to the Illinois Republican Party, and Turnaround Illinois transferred another $250,000 to Liberty Principles PAC in early April. Hard to keep track of all of that free flowing cash...
All together, campaigns have spent
over $371,000 on golf outings and over
$479,000
on legal expenses. $261,000 was spent on other local sponsorships, including events for baseball leagues, senior centers, and churches.
Over $800,000 was spent on tickets, including coveted seats to games and concerts across the state.
Campaigns spent a whopping
$289,000 on travel expenses, including trips to the Cayman Islands, San Juan, and Abu Dhabi.
$29,869 was spent on flowers alone,
and over $57,000 was spent on fines to the Illinois State Board of Elections. The largest spending trends are broken down in two charts below.
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For more information, contact ICPR Executive Director Sarah Brune at 312-436-1274 or sarah@ilcampaign.org. ICPR Data Analyst Brendan O'Rorke also contributed to this research. Data is sourced from the Illinois State Board of Elections and Illinois Sunshine.
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