A former government aide to Mayor Brandon Johnson who’s been listed as his campaign fund’s treasurer for several years is now telling state elections regulators that she hasn’t been in that role for a long while and should not be listed on paperwork.
A Johnson campaign aide insists that it’s all a misunderstanding and that Lisa Schrantz indeed has been serving as Friends of Brandon Johnson’s treasurer, but simply wasn’t involved in the “day-to-day” operations, which an outside company has been handling.
“The campaign was not sitting for two years without a treasurer,” said Johnson’s campaign aide, Christian Perry. He said Schrantz “misspoke” in a recent letter to the Illinois State Board of Elections in which she wrote:
“I have not been involved with the financial dealings of this committee for the past 2 years. I was under the impression that I had been removed from the list of officers, and a new treasurer had been named.
“I am asking that [her name] officially be removed.”
State elections rules require not only a chairperson and a treasurer for such campaign funds, but also that the names of those people be disclosed to the state elections board and be up to date — though the ramifications of not following those requirements are unclear.
Schrantz — a former government aide to Johnson at City Hall and in Cook County when he was a commissioner — couldn’t be reached for comment. A mayoral spokesman said she hasn’t worked at City Hall for some months.
Her letter to the elections board was dated Tuesday, and Perry said it was written with the knowledge of the campaign and Schrantz remains “a friend to the mayor.”
Still listed as chairperson of Johnson’s fund at that time was Cook County Commissioner Tara Stamps, who replaced Johnson on the Cook County Board.
In February, Stamps said she was leaving that role after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times about how she could hold that campaign role while also being employed by the Chicago Teachers Union, which negotiates with Johnson’s aides on the government side.
Stamps said Thursday: “I have no comment, and any further inquiry would be you being rude.”
Perry said Johnson will take over the campaign fund as chairman, while Crystal Gardner will be the treasurer.
Gardner has worked for United Working Families and the Service Employees International Union, both major financial backers of the mayor’s election efforts, along with the CTU, where Johnson was once employed.
Gardner’s mother previously served on the Chicago school board with Johnson’s backing.
A spokesperson for the elections board said of Schrantz, “She called us and asked if she was still listed as treasurer. When told that she was, she asked how she could be removed, and one of our campaign disclosure staffers told her to send something in writing explaining as much.
“It looks like the last report Lisa Schrantz filed as treasurer was on Oct. 11, 2022. After that, the reports are signed by people other than the treasurer,” so “even though the committee still had her listed as treasurer, it was not filing paperwork that falsely claimed she was filing reports.
“A committee is supposed to replace a departed officer within 10 days, though there is no defined penalty for not doing so,” the spokesperson said, adding that the state election code dictates that a campaign committee “should not accept or expend funds while there is a vacancy of an officer, though I am unaware of such a situation ever being the source of a complaint filed against a committee.”
Questions about Johnson’s campaign leadership are just the latest he has faced, with the Sun-Times reporting over the last two years not only about his campaign fund accepting money from unions that City Hall inks contracts with, but also from city contractors who are barred from giving to him.
Johnson’s campaign also has accepted campaign money from a law firm involved in litigation against City Hall, records show.