An independent political action committee run by a prominent Oak Park Democrat with close ties to State Senate President Don Harmon was fined $99,500 last week by the Illinois State Board of Elections for violating campaign disclosure rules.
Whether that fine will ever be paid is another matter.
That’s because after receiving word of the impending fine in August, Luke Casson, the head of the All for Justice independent political expenditure committee, emptied out the fund’s bank account by transferring all of the committee’s remaining funds to a what had been a dormant political committee that has the same mailing address as All for Justice and Casson’s law firm. The fine and fund transfer was first reported by the Chicago Tribune.
On August 31, Casson emptied the All for Justice bank account by transferring $149,515.94 to the Chicago Independent Alliance, which shares a mailing address with All for Justice and the Andreou and Casson law firm. Casson is both the chairman and treasurer of All for Justice, which raised and spent approximately $7.3 million to help elect two Democrats to hotly contested seats on the Illinois Supreme Court to preserve and expand the Democrats majority on the benches. Harmon’s personal campaign committee contributed $500,000 to All for Justice.
When asked to comment about the All for Justice fine, Harmon issued an statement through a spokesman.
“All political committees in Illinois have a responsibility and duty to comply with all applicable campaign finance regulations,” Harmon said.
Despite its empty bank account, All for Justice is responsible for paying the fine for not reporting its campaign expenditures on time for Democratic Supreme Court candidates Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay O’Brien, who both won their 2022 races.
“I’m not sure exactly what happens from this point on,” said Matt Dietrich, the spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections. “The fines are due and owing. They did not appeal the fines, which makes this kind of unusual.”
But collecting the fines seems unlikely now that All for Justice has no money left in its bank account. Casson has no personal liability to pay the fine.
“It’s the committee that’s being fined, so it’s not something where we can go after individuals to pay what is owed,” Dietrich said.
Casson is a former member of the Triton College Board of Trustees who was defeated when he ran for reelection in 2021. He is active in the Democratic Party of Oak Park, where he has served as political director and is a close associate of Harmon.
On August 3, 2023, the Illinois State Board of Elections sent a letter to Casson and All for Justice stating that All was Justice was going to be fined for 35 separate instances of late reporting of campaign expenditures of more than $1,000. Illinois law requires independent expenditure political action committees, such as All for Justice to report all expenditures of $1,000 or more within 10 days, or two days if they were made in the 30 days before an election.
However, All for Justice did not report most of its spending until a little more than two months after the November 2022 election. The expenditures were reported to the State Board of Elections 44 to 75 days late. In a Wednesday Journal story earlier this year, Casson explained the late reporting by saying it was a “scrivener’s error.”
Casson did not respond by deadline to Wednesday Journal’s messages left for him at his law office.
The August 3 letter from the Board of Elections informed Casson and All for Justice that it had 30 days to file a notice of appeal if it wanted to contest the fines. No appeal was filed. Instead, Casson transferred remaining funds to the Chicago Independent Alliance.
Chicago Independent Alliance was created on Jan. 1, 2019. Its stated purpose is “to make independent expenditures in support of independent candidates and common sense economic policies for growth and prosperity.” Its chair and treasurer are listed as Mary Chunn Daves, a resident of Hinsdale. Its original contributors were mostly electrical and other contracting firms.
Chicago Independent Alliance paid nearly $14,000 to an Oak Park firm, Professional Circulation Inc, which was incorporated in 2017, and is not currently in good standing. The address for Professional Circulation, Inc. listed on the State Board of Elections website is 315 S. Grove, which is also the residence of Luke and Amie Casson, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds website. Chicago Independent Alliance has been dormant since July 2019, when it paid $950 to the Illinois State Board of Elections in civil penalties for not timely reporting contributions of $1,000 or more.
The only contribution Chicago Independent Alliance has received since 2019, other than the transfer from All for Justice, came just one day earlier when it received a $200 contribution from the Andreou and Casson law firm. As of July 1, 2023, the Chicago Independent Alliance had just $5,206.62 in cash on hand.
Dietrich said that All for Justice is still responsible for paying the fine, even though it has no money left after the transfer. But it appears that Casson’s timely transfer will make that unlikely because Casson has no personal liability for the fine. Dietrich said that he knew of no other case where a political committee transferred money to another political committee to avoid paying a fine.
The only recourse available to the Illinois State Board of Elections is to refer the fine to the Illinois Attorney General for collection. But that would require a majority vote by the members of the elections board, which is made up of eight Democrats and eight Republicans.
“If the board so decides they can send any owed fines that are not being paid, then it can send it to the Attorney General to attempt collection, but that’s not something that we as a staff can do on our own, that takes a vote of the board,” Dietrich said.
Dietrich also said that an outside entity could file a complaint asking the State Board of Elections to refer the matter to the Attorney General.
“An outside entity would file a complaint against the committee alleging that committee intentionally moved this money because they knew that this fine was coming, so the most likely scenario would be that someone files a complaint,” Dietrich said.
