Mayor Brandon Johnson’s latest campaign finance reports suggest ongoing issues with sloppy clerical work as well as fundraising, a troubling sign for the freshman mayor midway into his term.
State records show that from July through September 2024, the mayor’s political fund raised about $3,500, at that point his lowest haul during his first two years in office — and a surprise given his role as host mayor of the Democratic National Convention that August. After that, Johnson reported an astonishingly low total of $970 raised during the next quarter that ended Dec. 31.
Johnson’s political spokesman Jake Lewis did not say Friday whether that $970 was a mistake beyond suggesting that amendments were forthcoming. Another spokesperson, Christian Perry, had told Politico the previous day that the mayor actually raised about $200,000, a much higher total but one that could land his political committee in hot water with the state due to contribution reporting requirements.
“Our campaign abides by all state and local campaign finance rules and regulations,” Lewis said in a statement. “Recent changes to city campaign finance law have required us to take the necessary time to properly vet contributions and ensure compliance. As we’ve done for the entirety of this Mayor’s term, we will file the appropriate amendments to reflect contributions to the campaign, a process that is commonplace in Illinois.”
Lewis did not elaborate on what city law he was referring to, but the mayor last year clashed with his handpicked Ethics Committee chair, Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, for what Martin said was resistance by the Johnson administration to his bid to codify a ban on lobbyist contributions to Chicago mayors. Martin ultimately muscled that change through in the fall.
The latest smorgasbord of accounting woes comes after Johnson already faced thousands in fines for prior campaign financing errors during his first run for the Cook County Board, refunded dozens of donations that violated mayoral executive orders, and saw recent corrections to five quarterly reports this fall. Johnson’s team omitted hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditures made at the end of his mayoral campaign and transition into office in 2023.
The mayor ended the most recent quarter — from October through December, 2024 — with $1 million in his campaign fund, down from $2 million at the start of 2024. Contributions began dwindling last year — raising $123,000 at the start of the year — but plummeted to $3,500 this past summer.
That is despite Johnson’s bid to burnish his progressive brand in the national spotlight of the August DNC by criss-crossing a circuit of celebratory events that week, some of which featured guest lists packed with deep-pocketed donors.
Johnson’s predecessor Lori Lightfoot, who began her first full quarter in office with $1.8 million in her fund, only saw her quarterly hauls dip that low in 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest. She had $1.2 million on hand at the end of 2020.
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, began his time as mayor raising below $1,000 each quarter until the end of 2012, his second year. He maintained a balance of more than $1 million throughout his first year-and-a-half in the mayor’s office. Making good on his reputation for turning on the spigot of cash from the business community whenever he wished, he logged nearly $570,000 in receipts by the end of 2012, his first full year in office.
As a candidate in 2023, Johnson relied on the city’s progressive labor vanguard — the Chicago Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union — to bankroll his campaign. Since taking office, his donors have diversified to include trade unions and other political interests, but the CTU remains his most loyal political ally that he can likely count on for financial backing once the 2027 election looms closer.
Meanwhile, the most recent quarter’s reports from Johnson’s political fund showed an even lower total from October to the end of 2024 — $970. If that number is indeed supposed to be $200,000, as Perry told Politico, that would then raise the question of why Johnson’s campaign did not file any Schedule A-1 forms for last quarter.
State campaign finance laws require political committees to report contributions of $1,000 or more from a single source within five business days, and sooner during election season. So unless that $200,000 only came from donations below $1,000, the mayor’s political fund would appear to have broken state reporting requirements. Johnson’s list of individual donors last quarter shows three contributions logged, each of them $100 payments from civil rights lawyer Sheila Bedi.
Another major revision, filed in October, corrected Johnson’s fund balance from the second quarter of 2023 to be about $400,000 under what was originally reported. The trouble, according to campaign filings, concerned leftover campaign spending and transition costs for April through June 2023.
Records show Johnson’s campaign omitted about $95,000 in contributions transferred from other political committees, including $10,000 from AFSCME, $25,000 from the finishing trades, and $25,000 from Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th, among several smaller donations.
The bigger accounting error was about $470,000 in expenditures not originally counted for the quarter. Among the largest omitted expenditures: $40,000 to rent Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority space in early April, $29,000 for Credit Union 1 arena, where Johnson was inaugurated, and $95,000 to his transition committee, Chicago for the People.
Also among large missing expenditures were the cost of consultants and political workers, about $45,000 for one of his campaign worker’s salaries, $34,600 to Howleit and Associates, which provided field consulting, $19,000 to Oak Park-based communications consultant Paul Goyette, and $32,000 to Maywood-based Raymil Consulting Services.
Johnson’s first campaign for county commissioner amassed several campaign finance violations and thousands of dollars in fines. The Tribune previously reported Johnson failed to disclose contributions or filing reports too late through 2018 and 2019.
Johnson’s campaign fund, Friends of Brandon Johnson, was faulted 18 times for filing A-1s late. Six were in-kind contributions of staffing or other campaign help from United Working Families, a progressive organizing group that receives funding from the Chicago Teachers Union. A $23,000 transfer from the Greater Austin Independent Political Organization — whose only donor at the time was the CTU’s PAC — was filed three weeks late during his county commissioner campaign. Three donations from the Cook County College Teachers Union COPE, which shares an address with the CTU, also came late.
Contributions from city labor unions are capped, not banned, which is how Johnson has been able to accept so much help from CTU and fellow progressive union representing service employees, SEIU.
His mayoral campaign at the time blamed it on clerical errors and small campaign staff. The initial fines from the state totaled $33,000 but were cut down. Johnson ended up paying over $18,000.
Since becoming mayor, however, he’s also been admonished for accepting campaign donations from lobbyists and individuals or companies doing business with the city and Chicago Public Schools, first reported by the Sun-Times.
An executive order authored by Emanuel barred such donations from both city contractors and lobbyists. Johnson’s political team said cashing those checks was an oversight, and that Johnson’s compliance team relied on city ordinances rather than the executive orders. They later refunded those donations.
Despite early pushback from Johnson, the City Council codified the ban on lobbyist donations in late 2024. Contributions from city contractors are already capped, but Johnson and the Council have not moved to adopt more stringent rules proposed by the city’s ethics board.
Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan contributed.