Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley has spent more than $631,000 so far as he runs for his seventh term as Illinois’s 5th Congressional District’s representative in 2020, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data.
The expenditures in the 2019-2020 election cycle are a decrease from the amount he spent in the previous cycle, during which he spent over $1.2 million, according to the FEC.
Quigley won the majority vote in 2018, earning 78% of the ballots cast with 66,254 votes compared with his Republican opponent, Tom Hanson’s 22% with 18,837 votes, according to the Illinois government.
Quigley’s competitor in the upcoming election is once again Hanson.
In 2018, Quigley spent $300,000 on a television advertisement campaign, which is nearly half the amount Quigley spent in this election cycle. Quigley also spent over $30,000 on fundraising activities such as gatherings at Wrigleyville Rooftops and Harry Caray’s.
Quigley has long been a patron of Wrigleyville Rooftops as he also used Wrigleyville Rooftops for his campaign in 2016, in which he spent $24,143.
According to Quigley, he is a die-hard Cubs fan and frequently uses the Wrigleyville Rooftops as a venue for his fundraising events. This election cycle, he has spent $39,316 on Wrigleyville Rooftops. Hanson’s campaign finance data is currently unavailable.
Quigley paid Anzalone Liszt Research $27,000 for polling information in 2018, but has not spent anything with the company in 2020 so far.
In the current election cycle, Quigley has donated more than $105,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, including two individual payments of $35,000 and $30,000 to the commission respectively, according to the FEC.
The two individual payments are the highest individual expenditures so far in 2020. Although Quigley donated more money to the DCCC during his 2018 campaign, it was not nearly the most expensive donation, and Quigley’s campaign spent nearly double the amount in 2018 than they did in 2020.
In digital advertising, Quigley only spent $43,500, paling in comparison to the $300,000 he spent on digital advertising in 2018.
Quigley also donated $1,500 in both 2018 and 2020 cycles to the Illinois Women’s Institute for Leadership. The Illinois Women’s Institute for Leadership“ prepares and trains Democratic women to run for elected office, seek public appointments, and govern effectively at all levels in Illinois,” according to their website. It is an eight-month training that has locations across Illinois and in Washington D.C. for six multi-day sessions.
In addition, Quigley spent about $140,000 of his 2020 funds on New Chicago Consulting, a Chicago-based political consulting group that has several high profile clients such as the House Majority PAC, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and U.S. Representative Bill Foster alongside the aforementioned Illinois Women’s Institute for Leadership Training Academy.