From The Southern

ILLINOIS POLITICAL RACES BREAK THREE FINANCIAL RECORDS
BY NICOLE SACK
THE SOUTHERN
[Sat Oct 30 2004]
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS -- Three big political races in Illinois have broken three big money records during the 2004 election season.
The Illinois U.S. Senate race, the 5th District Supreme Court and State Senate 59th District campaigns have raked in more than a combined $24.5 million.
Fund-raising totals in the Illinois Supreme Court race between Republican Lloyd Karmeier and Democrat Gordon Maag have now exceeded the last record for type of contest four times over, reports the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group working to increase public awareness of how political campaign are funded in Illinois.
Not only has the Karmeier-Maag race broken a state record, it has also broken the national record for candidate spending in a high court race. The two candidates have raised a total of $6.63 million.
As of Oct. 26, Karmeier's campaign has pulled in a total of $4.1 million, of which the Illinois Republican Party contributed $1.9 million and the Illinois Civil Justice League handed out $1.1 million.
The American Tort Reform Association has given $525,000 to Illinois Political action committees and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sent $1.2 million into the state. According to the ICPR, neither group has previously given significantly in Illinois.
Maag's campaign has taken in $2.6 million, most of which came from the Democratic Party of Illinois, which contributed $2.4 million. The party has taken hundreds of thousands from personal injury trail lawyers.
About 92 percent of the $707, 622 taken in by the party between Jan. 1 and June 30 came from lawyers, said Cindi Canary, director of ICPR.
The ICPR states that while money is flooding into the race, most funds come from very few donors and the largest donors appear to be conduit for other interests, concerned mainly with tort reform.
One of the hottest races in Southern Illinois is the contest between state Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, and Republican candidate Ron Summers of Benton.
Despite the fact that the 59th Senate district is one of the poorest in Illinois, the combined funds of both candidates breaks the previous record set by one of Illinois' richest senate districts.
The ICPR reports the Forby-Summers race has pooled combined receipts of $1.99 million for the general election, which breaks the record set by Susan Garret and Kathy Parker, who raised a combined $1.98 million in receipts during the 2002 general election race in Chicago's North shore 29th Senate District.
In the Illinois U.S. Senate race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Alan Keyes, a combined total of $15.9 million has been raised since the beginning of the campaign. The vast majority -- $14.3 million -- has gone to the Obama campaign.
Obama raised nearly $4.2 million alone in the third quarter, from July 1 through Sept. 30, beating the record set during the previous quarter for an amount raised by a Senate candidate from Illinois in three months.
Obama has spent $12.5 million during the election cycle, leaving $1.8 million in the bank for the remainder of the general election.
Keyes has raised a total of $1.6 million since entering the senate race in early August, but has only spent $840,454.
A recent Chicago Tribune/WGN television poll shows Obama with a 50-point lead over Keyes.
nicole.sack@thesouthern.com 618-351-5816