The Chicago Tribune reports (7/8/25) that in 2023 my state senator, Don Harmon, “contributed $100,001 to his own campaign,” one dollar over the amount “that allowed him to accept unlimited funds” under a provision of state law (written by him) that was designed to level the playing field for poor candidates running against rich ones who could spend unlimited amounts of their own money. If somebody did spend over $100,000, then the poor one could accept unlimited funds, too. Harmon then collected $4,000,000. You’d think he would have put in a provision disqualifying himself, as a candidate, from triggering this with his own personal funds.
Who was the rich opponent spending unlimited funds of his own that “poor” Harmon had to be made equal to?
Such a law would seem appropriate only when it was somebody else who contributed the trigger amount — not when it was the candidate himself contributing to his own fund. But apparently the law says otherwise, and Harmon can do it, as he writes in his opinion piece (Tribune 7/9/25), asserting that this was included in the very purpose of the law — which he wrote. Perhaps he was planning ahead.
The result is that Harmon is effectively free to abolish all contribution caps in a state ethics law that he himself wrote, simply by paying himself 100 big ones. Proving the old saw that the scandal is not what people do that is illegal, but what they do that is legal!
Harmon goes on to argue a technical defense against some $10,000,000 in penalties for doing so, based on the purpose of the law being to give Senate candidates equal treatment with House candidates, an argument completely irrelevant to, and missing the most important point — the ethical point. I don’t care about legal defenses; only ethical ones, and in my opinion there is none here. Harmon, who is supposed to be Mr. (squeaky) Clean, an ethics reformer, is only proving that Springfield is a town that “ain’t ready for reform,” and enhancing its reputation as being less interested in real ethics than in something it can call ethics, but is not.
If this is what Mr. Ethics is up to, heaven help us!
This is apparently not Mr. Harmon’s first bout with questionable ethics in 2023. As the Tribune reported (2/21/24) the State Board of Elections unanimously (8-0) upheld $108,500 in fines for late filing of disclosures by a PAC backed by Harmon personally (to the tune of $500,000 of his own money), that was involved in the Supreme Court election campaign and run by a close associate of his who played what can only be called a shell game — transferring $149,516 out of the PAC to another one, leaving it penniless and “unable” to pay the fines (despite Tribune reports that it offered a settlement payment of $30,000 which the board rejected).
When I wrote about that (Wednesday Journal Viewpoints, 12/12/23) I said it stinks to high heaven. And I publicly pledged not to vote for him until I learned that his pet PAC had paid the fines it owed. I have just checked with the board and been told it was never paid. I guess Harmon needed the $100,001 to contribute to himself, to evade the contribution caps on his own campaign.
This new ethical challenge is too much. I’m a lifelong, super-progressive “lefty,” and ready to presume Mr. Harmon’s substantive policies largely coincide with my own. But I cannot vote for a candidate with ethics like this. I doubt Mr. Harmon will miss my vote, but I will not vote for him as my Senator until I see assurance by him (public or private) of what he has done to clean up his ethics on both of these matters.
Frank Stachyra is a 50+ year resident of Oak Park.