Lyons District 103 school board winners (from left) Sharon Anderson, Marge Hubacek and Shannon Johnson (Photo courtesy of Shannon Johnson)

The middle of April is when some Cook County consolidated election results start to make sense to local politics watchers.

That’s when the Illinois State Board of Elections performs the Big Reveal — when quarterly campaign committee cash donations and expenditures must be posted online for the dates of Jan. 1 through March 31. Because it’s Illinois, this means the financial donors behind many candidates are often unmasked only after the elections.

In suburban Cook, where most school board races were uncontested, a few standout campaigns beat well-financed incumbents. Those grassroot teams were led by parent volunteers, with the help of social media. Looking at the campaign cash reveals how political novices were often outspent, or incumbents had large gifts from individual donors, yet the newcomers were victorious anyway.

“Checking the D-2s,” is a practice named after the board of election reporting form. Checking them has been made easier this time around with the real-time Illinois Sunshine Project website, sponsored by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. Drawing data from the state board of elections, the site makes campaign donations and expenditures much easier to search online.

Since school board members serve as volunteers, whenever large amounts of cash appear in a district race, there’s often a story behind it. In the 2015 elections, at least five local school boards in West Cook County were targets of takeover attempts, mostly successful, by local politicians who usually had a school attorney on board to pay the bills.

Lyons D103: Outfunded 5-to-1

In Lyons Elementary District 103, town Mayor Christopher Getty transferred in almost $33,000 of his own campaign cash to the committee fund of Parents for Student Excellence representing incumbent candidates Katie Broderick and Kendra Pierce and newcomer Olivia Quintero. This method worked in 2015, when the mayor paid expenses for candidates who became a new board majority. Once elected, the board hired new administrators, lawyers and other employees, many connected to local politicians.

Proviso Together candidates Samuel Valtierrez, Arbdella Patterson, Rodney Alexander and Amanda Grant pose at a campaign event. (Photo courtesy of 209 Together Facebook page)

The 2015-hired lawyers, Odelson & Sterk, LTD, were among the handful of donors to the mayor-backed slate in 2017. Also donating were a restaurant and contractor companies hired to remodel the administrative offices. The total donations reported for the losing team was $35,950, in 10 donations. The mayor’s team also made five donations between $950-$995, just under the $1,000 large donation threshold, which must be declared as a separate donation, or  “A-1,” within 48 hours.

The winning Putting Students First team candidates, Shannon Johnson, Sharon Anderson and Marge Hubacek said they spent less than $4,000 on their self-funded campaign. Because the amount spent was less than $5,000, Putting Students First candidates weren’t required to file donations with the state board of elections. Johnson said expenditures consisted of T-shirts, signs and printed fliers, which were delivered door-to-door.

“[Parents for Student Excellence] spent a lot of money on signs,” said Sharon Anderson. “They were everywhere. But signs don’t vote”

Proviso Township HS 209: Many small donations

The Proviso Together grassroots team of Rodney Alexander, Arbdella Patterson, Amanda Grant and Samuel Valtierrez was faced with running an independent campaign in a 70 square-mile district consisting of 10 towns with more than 70,000 registered voters. They were challenging the Proviso First incumbents, board President Teresa McKelvey, Vice President Brian Cross, Dan Adams and newcomer Jacqueline M. Walton.

Building on the success of the 2015 election, where candidates Claudia Medina and Ned Wagner joined incumbent Theresa Kelly to defeat three incumbents, the newbie candidates used Facebook to coordinate an army of door-knocking volunteers. Those neighbors also donated in small multiple gifts to the campaign.

In the previous race, the new candidates were heavily outspent, but in 2017 race, the new candidates actually drew in about $20,000 more in smaller, individual donations.

Proviso Together, the winning team, declared $46,461.37 in the first quarter, identifying 183 individual gifts averaging around $150 per donation. They also received $5,835 in in-kind gifts. The independent team spent around $41,400 on the campaign, for postage, printing, design and a fundraiser.

By contrast, Proviso First declared only $25,676 in first-quarter campaign from 39 identified donations averaging about $1,000 each. The losing team also received in-kind donations of $844. Proviso First declared $23,199 in expenditures.

Both party’s candidates self-financed a portion of their campaign. The losing team declared self-financed donations totaling $5,095, or 17.5 percent of the total. But they did not have the financial support of neighbors who were not politicians. All other individual donations, totaling $12,660, or about 43 percent of the total, were listed from addresses outside the school district.  The remaining $7,670, or about 26 percent of the campaign’s financing came as transfers from committees of other politicians or PACs, including $3,500 from Melrose Park Mayor Ron Serpico, $720 from Cook County Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough, and $1,000 from Cook County Commissioner Jeffrey Tobolski, among others.

The winning Proviso Together team had a formula that depended on many small frequent donations from people and businesses in the district. About $36,500, or 73 percent of donations came from residents and businesses in the district, mostly from Forest Park. The candidates self-financed about 19 percent of the total, or $9,500.

“Proviso Together is a dedicated group of volunteers who are neighbors and who care about what’s best for the kids in this district,” said Connie Brown, campaign manager.

Both new boards will be sworn in in May.

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— Campaign cash shows how newbies won Cook school board elections —