Bill Daley topped the $3 million mark in fundraising and extended his financial advantage in the Chicago mayoral race Tuesday, thanks to a round of checks that included support from a member of the Kennedy clan.
Daley reported adding $137,714 to his campaign war chest, including a $10,000 contribution from the campaign committee of U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a Democrat from the famous political family who represents a congressional district outside Boston. Kennedy, the grandson of the late Robert F. Kennedy, has become a rising star in the party in recent years, delivering the Democratic rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech earlier this year.
Daley also reported a $10,000 contribution from Thomas and Victoria Vallely of Boston. Thomas Vallely is a senior adviser at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The Massachusetts money came as part of an East Coast fundraising swing that took Daley to Boston and Washington, D.C.
His campaign confirmed he attended a pair of Washington, D.C. fundraisers hosted by veterans of former president Bill Clinton’s White House, where he served as a U.S. Commerce secretary. Many of those Clinton veterans and Washington donors did not turn up in the contributions Daley reported Tuesday, a sign that the former banking executive is poised to report more contributions soon.
Daley, the son and brother of two former mayors, now has reported raising more than $3.1 million since entering the race for mayor in September, after Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the surprise announcement that he would drop his bid for a third term. When Emanuel departed the race, he had raised more than $10 million toward his re-election effort.
The three other candidates who entered the race after Emanuel got out trail Daley in fundraising.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has raised $1.7 million, including $1 million from the Service Employees International Union, state campaign finance records show. Gery Chico, an attorney who held a variety of City Hall leadership posts under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, has reported nearly $1.4 million in donations. State comptroller Susana Mendoza has raised $677,000 since entering the race last month, including $500,000 she transferred over from her comptroller campaign fund.
Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, both of whom challenged Emanuel before he exited, have raised more than $900,000, records show. There are no contribution limits in the mayor’s race, because businessman Willie Wilson has self-funded his campaign with more than $800,000 in contributions, records show.
In his latest filing, Daley also collected $56,000 from six law partners at Kirkland & Ellis, including $25,000 from John R. O’Neill and $10,000 each from Bill A. Levy and Daniel Perlman. The former executive with JPMorgan Chase also reported $19,500 in contributions from nine attorneys with Jenner & Block.
Also listed in the fundraising report: $4,714 in food for a fundraiser at Gibson’s Italia, a new restaurant that overlooks the Chicago River downtown. That tab was covered by Daley nephew Robert Vanecko, who has a controversial history at City Hall.
During former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s tenure, Vanecko and the mayor’s son Patrick Daley acquired a 4 percent stake in a sewer inspection company that held a city contract. The sewer company got caught up in a federal investigation that found that it and others used a minority-owned business as a front to win city business. Vanecko and the mayor’s son were not accused of wrongdoing, but it created plenty of political embarrassment for the mayor who fought off tears at the time while saying his son was guilty of “a lapse in judgment.”
A similar controversy emerged in 2009, when federal investigators probed the decision by three pension funds to invest $68 million in a firm co-owned by Vanecko. Then-Mayor Daley said he didn’t know about the investments until they were reported in the news media, despite top aides having served on the pension funds’ boards. Just last week, the Sun-Times reported on how the city lost $54 million on the pension deal with Vanecko, who got $9 million in fees tied to the losing investments.
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December 18, 2018 at 07:39PM
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