In this Intelligence Report: Who is contributing the money?
Investigative reporter Chuck Goudie has been looking at newly filed campaign records.
The election is in 13 days, but if dollars were votes Bill Brady would win by a hair. Since July, Brady has brought in about $200,000 more than Governor Pat Quinn.
Both men have about the same amount of money at this point, in the $8 million range, but where the money comes from sets them apart.
After the fall of Democrat Rod Blagojevich, the national Republican party saw an opening in Illinois, and the GOP candidate for governor, Senator Bill Brady, ended up in the money.
According to the latest campaign disclosure records filed with state election authorities, the National Republican Governor's Political Action Committee gave Brady almost $4 million in August and September. That amounts to nearly half of Brady's total take since mid-summer.
While the report from his campaign lists 250 pages of donations, mostly from individuals, there are dozens of contributions from business organizations, including $250,000 from the Illinois Manufacturers Association, and six-figure checks from the state chamber of commerce and other organizations that have an interest in pro-business legislation.
Total donations to Brady's campaign since July: $8,461,000.
Governor Pat Quinn reports total contributions just shy of Brady's: $8,223,000.
Quinn's donors are Democratic fixtures, including organized labor, with sizable donations from numerous unions, including about $1 million from the Service Employees, who represent thousands of state workers.
While the total contributed in the race for governor is about the same as four years ago, what is different compared to when Rod Blagojevich was running for re-election is the distribution. In 2006, Blagojevich had $15 million to himself, and Judy Baar Topinka had only $4.5 million.
There are three other candidates for governor. State financial reports show the Libertarian Lex Green and Rich Whitney, the Green party candidate, each brought in less than $50,000.
Then there is Scott Lee Cohen, the pawn broker turned independent for governor. All we know is that Cohen loaned his campaign a million dollars of his own money this month. He missed the deadline for filing required disclosure forms with the state and could be fined up to $10,000 for doing so.
