My associate Isabel Miller and I told subscribers earlier this month that Democrats for the Illinois House had been suddenly cut off from the Democratic Party of Illinois’ lucrative postage discount program, which can save as much as one-third to half of campaign postage costs.
Afterward, an extraordinary interaction occurred between the executive director of the House Democrats’ caucus campaign committee and the chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
Let’s first break down a few differences in the two stories offered in separate explanatory emails sent to House Democrats.
Democrats for the Illinois House’s TaQuoya McConnico explained the decision to walk away from the state party this way: “The financial structure proposed for participation in the coordinated campaign called for a $750,000 investment followed by an adjusted $500,000 investment that demanded a payment from each individual House member – YOU. Speaker declined to commit to payment from each House member.”
This unprecedented action to split from the Democratic Party of Illinois was taken less than two months before Election Day without Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch ever consulting members of his House Democratic Caucus.
Welch has been under fire for months for how he has run the chamber, to the point where it’s no longer a slam dunk that he will be reelected in January. Cutting out your members before taking such a late-in-the-game step probably isn’t helping his cause.
State Democratic Party of Illinois Chair Lisa Hernandez told House Democrats hours later that the party had reduced its ask twice — ultimately requesting just $400,000 — “the same contribution as the Senate,” which has about half the number of members as the House and far fewer targeted races on the ballot. That’s a pretty good deal.
But the offer was still rejected, and for questionable reasons. “The proposed DPI-coordinated campaign structure called for Welch to demand $10,000 in contributions from every single House member — even in cases where members don’t have a race and don’t have that amount of cash on hand,” McConnico wrote, giving the above-mentioned total of $500,000.
Hernandez told a much different story.
“We did not demand that individual members personally write $10,000 checks to DPI. I asked members to help raise those funds, and I offered to make those fundraising calls myself.
“The $10,000 reflects federal limits on Levin funds, which help fund voter registration, voter contact, and get-out-the-vote work through the Coordinated Campaign. Because those funds are limited to $10,000 from any one source, funding an operation of this size requires support from multiple contributors. I wanted to do whatever I could to help us reach an agreement.”
There’s a school of thought that Welch didn’t want to ask some of his members to pony up $10,000 each (even with state party help) to buy them into the party’s coordinated campaign when, as mentioned above, several of his members are refusing to give him another term with the gavel.
And the Welch allies may somehow see the hand of Gov. JB Pritzker in all this because Pritzker has not explicitly defended Welch during successive scandals this summer.
A House Democratic official told another publication last week that Welch is also more concerned that a coordinated campaign would benefit the top of the ticket far more than legislative candidates.
But the object of some past coordinated campaign mailers has been to use the popularity of the top of the ticket to boost legislative and down-ballot candidates.
Welch also demanded a $2.1 million refund from the state party, which the party, in a spirit of cooperation, complied with immediately. The money hadn’t yet been spent on direct mail.
Welch also demanded that the party comb through its files to determine whether he was owed a refund on another $2 million already given to DPI and mostly spent on mail. The state party spent last week working with its campaign vendors to look for any possible Welch money when it should’ve been working on its fall campaign operation.
McConnico said in her letter to members that it was possible that Welch would push for a special meeting of the state party to discuss the rift. But sources said Welch didn’t have enough weighted votes to get the meeting called, especially with the clock ticking toward November.
This is no way to run a rodeo.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.