Local politician and guitar hero Donald Harmon in 2009, co-wrote, co-sponsored, and helped pass the very campaign finance law now threatening to cost him nearly $10 million in punitive fines. The spectacle would be amusing if it were not such a transparent example of power and comfort calcifying into corruption and institutional decay. Harmon did not simply massage the rules; he bent them until they splintered, crafting a personal money shield that may now turn on its creator.
After triggering the state’s self-funding exemption, which he himself designed, Harmon proceeded to raise more than $4 million over the legal limit. When confronted with a nearly $10 million penalty, his defense was that he misunderstood the timing of the law he had been applying correctly since 2009. His office hung up on me when I called to ask about the incident, after first claiming to be unaware of it.
These were not Vegas winnings. Don’s last name isn’t Pritzker, and his skill at blackjack is unclear. What is clear is his comfort stacking political IOUs to the ceiling in a non-election year while public trust erodes. His longtime attorney, another veteran of the Madigan political machine, calling the fine “unconstitutional,” ignores the real danger here — not just legal overreach but moral decomposition.
When a politician most Illinoisans could not pick out from the staff at a golf course pro shop shrugs off a nearly $10 million violation, as if it were an honest mistake, it is less a scandal and more a mirror.
The State Board of Elections should uphold the hearing officer’s recommendation and let the fine stand. Illinois doesn’t have a corruption problem so much as a humility problem, defined by men like Don Harmon, who mistake self-interest for service and call it public life.
Joshua Cooper
Oak Park
