When hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin determined to throw $50mn of his personal cash behind a candidate to unseat a fellow billionaire from the Illinois governor’s mansion, the huge measurement of his spending ought to have made it a foolproof plan.
The solely drawback: a rival Republican billionaire had the identical concept. Now, the race pits three of the richest males in US politics in opposition to each other and has come to symbolise the most recent pattern in state-level political races — candidates financed by only one rich, highly-motivated donor.
The incumbent, Democrat JB Pritzker, is an inheritor to the Hyatt lodge fortune who has self-funded his marketing campaign to the quantity of $125mn. Republican Richard Irvin, a mainstream mayor of the state’s second-largest metropolis, is backed by Griffin, chief govt of Citadel. And his rival for the Republican nomination is Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator who has acquired greater than $9mn from GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein.
While Uihlein has injected considerably much less into the race than Griffin, and obtained concerned at a later date, it’s the Uihlein-backed Bailey who’s polling 15 factors forward of Irvin, based on a brand new ballot of seemingly Republican voters within the June 28 major.
The election is on monitor to be the most costly gubernatorial race in US historical past, based on OpenSecrets, the non-partisan watchdog group.
It will even be a litmus check of how particular person donors can wield affect by writing a giant cheque to help a candidate early on within the race — a pattern that has grown because the Supreme Court lifted marketing campaign finance limits in 2010. Traditionally, billionaires like Uihlein, a transport provides magnate, and Griffin, would funnel their donations via social gathering committees and PACs, which might then decide candidates to again.
Griffin and Uihlein are usually not alone in going the direct route. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has just lately made a behavior of writing $10mn and $20mn cheques to rightwing midterm candidates effectively earlier than their primaries.
Even on this small universe of multimillion greenback particular person donations, Griffin’s giving has attracted consideration. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” stated one Republican fundraiser.
Before the Supreme Court resolution, political donations have been capped within the 1000’s of {dollars}. “If a corporate PAC makes a $10,000 donation in a cycle, that is huge. You have that candidate’s ear, you have almost unlimited access,” the Republican fundraiser stated. With Griffin donating within the tens of hundreds of thousands: “The amount of power he has is unbelievable.”
So far this cycle, Griffin has donated greater than $65mn to largely Republican candidates on the federal and state degree, based on knowledge from OpenSecrets. In the 2020 cycle, he gave over $180mn to state and federal candidates, whereas in Illinois, he has pumped $179mn into races since 2002, based on knowledge from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
While Illinois is a reliably Democratic state in presidential elections, there may be considerably extra competitors on the gubernatorial degree. The state behaves like Massachusetts, Vermont and Maryland — all blue bastions that recurrently elect Republican governors. Of the six Illinois governors since 1991, half have been Republicans, together with Pritzker’s predecessor Bruce Rauner, one other multimillionaire turned politician.
For Griffin, the state’s richest man, the Illinois governor’s race is private. In November 2021, he advised reporters that he would go “all-in” to financially again whichever candidate he thought had an opportunity to defeat Pritzker, with whom he has clashed on tax regulation and policing.
“Richard Irvin is the exact opposite of JB Pritzker,” Griffin advised the Financial Times. “As mayor of Aurora, Richard has successfully delivered on the issues Illinoisans care most about.”
Pritzker, alternatively, has failed to cut back “the senseless violence and corruption engulfing the state”, Griffin added, insisting the incumbent — whose sister Penny was Barack Obama’s commerce secretary — has “focused on his own political image and ambitions”.
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Representatives for Pritzker and Uihlein didn’t reply to requests for remark. Bailey’s marketing campaign famous that the state senator had the help of greater than 20,000 volunteers, along with Uihlein’s monetary backing. Irvin has stated {that a} vote for Bailey, whose rightwing views and hardline anti-abortion platform might delay the state’s hundreds of thousands of reasonable voters, is a vote for Pritzker.
“It’s like two bullies in a playground,” stated Chris Mooney, a political-science professor on the University of Illinois at Chicago, referring to Pritzker and Griffin.
One Democratic strategist concerned in Illinois politics referred to as the Republican major “surprisingly intense”, warning the overall election might be, too, regardless of the money Pritzker himself has poured into his marketing campaign.
“Money can’t buy you everything, and Pritzker should not be seen as some sacred cow that can never be defeated. He obviously can,” the strategist added.
Illinois has lengthy had a convention of vibrant — and sometimes corrupt — political figures, many cast within the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago’s bare-knuckled campaigns the place unions, property builders and a handful of political dynasties vied for dominance. Griffin, Uihlein and Pritzker are altering that.
“The typical machine politics that dominated the money game . . . has now been replaced by a handful of billionaires,” the strategist stated. “It may reduce corruption, but I don’t know if that’s better for democracy.”
Despite the rising variety of candidates securing a single billionaire backer — in addition to billionaire candidates self-financing their campaigns — it stays unclear whether or not the funding mannequin is a route to success.
“When you have a candidate who’s getting most of their money from one specific person or group . . . it isn’t the same as getting money from a wide variety of constituents,” stated Pete Quist, deputy analysis director of OpenSecrets.
Most donors who’re prepared to present candidates small-dollar contributions are additionally extra motivated to vote, Quist added.
Todd Maisch, chief govt of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, stated he considered the billionaire political mannequin as unnatural and unsustainable and believed Irvin’s incapacity to realize traction regardless of Griffin’s backing was “the end of billionaires deciding what is or isn’t going to happen in Illinois”.
Others are much less sanguine. “I don’t think [the billionaires] are going to go away,” stated one other Democratic strategist. It could “take a while before they get to a place where labour [unions have] been in Illinois”.
Additional reporting by Caitlin Gilbert in New York
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