According to reports, the Illinois State Board of Elections is investigating any inappropriate coordination between Darren Bailey’s campaign and a political action group that was supporting him during his time as the GOP’s former nominee for governor.
As per Crain’s Chicago Business, a hearing examiner saw legitimate grounds to look into the relationship between Bailey and the “People Who Play By The Rules PAC,” which is led by conservative activist Dan Proft.
Proft’s Chicago radio show frequently featured Bailey as a guest, and the concerns he brought up there would later be the subject of advertisements bought by Proft’s PAC.
According to the complaint, frequent appearances by Bailey on Proft’s radio show demonstrate how the two parties worked together to defeat Democrat J.B. Pritzker, who went on to win reelection. As per Ben Hardin, interim executive director of the Democratic Party of Illinois, that is against state laws surrounding donations.
However, attorney Jeffrey Meyer, who is representing the former senator’s campaign, “the Bailey for Illinois committee vehemently denies it has violated any campaign finance laws, and I am confident the State Board of Elections will find there has been no violation after a hearing on the merits.”
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Allegations Against Darren Bailey
Emails asking Proft and his attorney for comment received no response. A number of claims were rejected by ISBE hearing officer Andy Nauman in his report on the complaint, although he did urge “a public hearing to flesh out the coordination issue to establish if both committees violated contribution limitations or not.”
According to ISBE spokesman Matt Dietrich, the next step is for the matter to be given to an outside hearing officer who will conduct a hearing or series of hearings and make a recommendation to the board.
The parties will then address the board in an open session at a subsequent meeting, maybe as early as April. Attorneys for Proft and Bailey have mocked those presumptions. Proft’s attorney Joseph Vanderhulst claimed that the Democrats “were on a fishing expedition.”
The Bailey campaign “had any control over any of Mr. Proft’s acts,” according to Meyer, who claimed that the lawsuit neither provided evidence nor even claimed that.
In the end, “I don’t think this is a big concern,” said Kent Redfield, emeritus professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
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