To understand the power of money in politics, consider the contrast between two recent proposals to amend the Illinois constitution, and the way political spending affected the quality of the debate — and the future of our state.
The first case happened two years ago, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated-rate income tax amendment went down, by a wide margin, due in part to the millions spent by billionaire Ken Griffin. Pritzker is a billionaire, too, so the 2020 tax fight earned the nickname “The Battle of the Billionaires.”
The other matter wrapped up just last month: Voters narrowly approved an amendment that changes the future of labor relations in Illinois in profound and possibly permanent ways.
It’s common to bemoan the power of money in politics. And if there were a real world where politics could be free of money, I would pick that option too.
But this world is one where moneyed interests power debates on virtually every important issue. The gaps created by the decline of news coverage have made matters worse. And in this flawed world, the money that lines up behind either side of a contentious issue dominates discussion as never before.
The vote on Pritzker’s graduated income tax proposal was one such case where money dominated public debate. Pritzker and Griffin each spent around $55 million to get their points across — casting the issues in sharp relief.
Pritzker’s tax-the-rich messaging contended against Griffin’s warnings about trusting a state government with a track record of corruption and bloated spending. In the end, distrust overpowered the temptation to tax the rich, and the signature policy proposal of Pritzker’s first term was defeated.
Whatever the corrosive effect of money on politics may be, I’ll take the spirited debate ahead of thegraduated-rate income tax vote over the one-sided match leading up to this year’s vote on Amendment 1. The big money on the conservative side barely showed up; the big money on the union side rallied around the cause, and an issue of great importance was only lightly examined before voters went to the polls.
Illinois already had a state law guaranteeing employees the right to union representation. The Workers’ Rights Amendment enshrines the protection in the state constitution. It also expands beyond traditional notions about collective bargaining over wages and hours and gives employees new constitutionally protected rights to “protect their economic welfare and safety at work.”
It’s that last bit of expansive language that takes the Illinois constitution into untested territory. The “welfare and safety” language is so vague, and the case law so thin, it seems sure to create a thicket of unintended consequences.
Conservative opposition to the new rights is no surprise. But I’ve talked to sources in Democratic circles, including in the Pritzker administration, who also have concerns. The expansive new language has the potential for disruptive effects in health care, policing and education, among other sectors.
The stakes are high, which makes it all the more perplexing that this vital issue drew so little public debate leading up to the midterm vote. The Tribune editorial page published a detailed argument against the amendment in the run-up to the election, and other editorial boards weighed in. But news coverage statewide focused scant attention on the stakes and consequences. Pritzker and his gubernatorial opponent, Republican Darren Bailey, barely touched on the issue.
This left the unions that backed the measure with a chance to shape public opinion. Dozens of union locals from across the state contributed the bulk of the $13 million raised by a campaign committee, formed in 2020, to build support for the amendment.
The “Vote Yes” committee ran ads featuring firefighters, health care workers and construction workers. It placed opinion pieces and sympathetic coverage in the news and rallied rank-and-file supporters statewide. It ran a get-out-the-vote campaign.
On the other side, opponents barely stirred.
The campaign committee run by the Illinois Policy Institute wasn’t formed until early September, with a $1 million contribution from Richard Uihlein of Lake Forest, the major Republican donor. Uihlein kicked in another $1 million just two weeks before the election, bringing the campaign committee’s total to just under $3 million as of the last reporting period.
Underfunded and with a late start, the Vote No on Amendment 1 committee never found an effective message. A low point was the group’s inability to persuasively prove a claim that passage of the amendment would increase property taxes for the average Illinois family by $2,149 over four years. They needed to do better.
Uihlein, for his part, has cause to wonder if he might have made a difference. He spent more than $50 million supporting Bailey’s campaign against Pritzker that was bound to fail almost no matter how much Uihlein spent. Had Uihlein made his move earlier and diverted, say, $10 million of his Bailey money toward matching union spending on the Workers’ Rights Amendment, the outcome might have been different.
This was a winnable electoral contest, and at least Uihlein tried. Many other conservative funders, the type who helped defeat the graduated-rate income tax amendment just two years ago by contributing alongside Griffin, chose not to commit to defeat Amendment 1 at all.
With Griffin gone, the conservative movement in Illinois lost more than Griffin’s millions. Perhaps they lost his political mojo too.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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