Ron Gidwitz enthusiastically vows to clean up Illinois government. He knows how to do it, too. On his campaign Web site, the GOP candidate for governor makes strong and admirable statements about how, if elected, cleanliness will come by making the workings of government far more transparent.
Gidwitz will require lobbyists to disclose all political contributions. He will open state purchases to public scrutiny. He will require candidates to report all campaign contributions within two days of deposit. He will ban contributions from corporations doing business with the state.
To underscore just how serious he is about wanting to “end the `pay-to-play’ culture in Springfield,” Gidwitz promises full disclosure of every contributor to his campaign within 48 hours of deposit. Sure enough, his Web site displays all 645 contributors to date, a star-studded list of the extremely wealthy and extraordinarily powerful in Illinois.
Who is this Ron Gidwitz?
It’s the same man who co-founded the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth & Prosperity, a business group that refuses to disclose who gave money to its campaign last year to elect a Republican to the Illinois Supreme Court.
The Illinois Coalition gave truckloads of money to Republican Lloyd Karmeier but won’t say who provided the money. Karmeier won the election in southern Illinois.
Another group, the Justice for All Foundation, was created by trial lawyers to funnel gobs of anonymous cash into Democrat Gordon Maag’s campaign for the court.
Both groups legally avoided state disclosure laws by establishing non-profit corporations. Those groups together poured more than $750,000 into the race. They donated money to political action committees, which in turn contributed to the candidates. That process allowed the Illinois Coalition and Justice for All to hide the identities of their contributors.
The Supreme Court race was the most expensive for that office in Illinois history. It was widely regarded as a referendum on tort reform, and Karmeier’s victory was an upset. Democrats had controlled the seat for many years.
The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform filed a complaint with the state, and in response Justice for All agreed to reveal its donors. All five contributors turned out to be trial lawyers–one from as far away as South Carolina, two from St. Louis.
But the Illinois Coalition, a consortium of major employers seeking to improve Illinois’ business climate, still won’t name names.
Why? “It’s a good question,” Gidwitz conceded in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s not a good reason except people were told it wouldn’t be disclosed. It became a question of keeping your word as opposed to disclosing.”
That may sound high-minded. But the fact is that Gidwitz’s group was created precisely to hide from the public who was bankrolling a political campaign. And that’s antithetical to all the “reform” rhetoric coming from candidate Gidwitz.
