CU-CitizenAccess.org (https://www.cu-citizenaccess.org/tag/illinois/)
Incumbent Lauren Underwood has spent over $5 million so far on her reelection campaign for Illinois’s 14th Congressional District.
During Underwood’s first election, her expenditures totaled $4.89 million; that number has been exceeded, with Underwood spending $5.3 million for the 2019-2020 cycle so far.
Seeking re-election for a fourth consecutive cycle, Democratic incumbent congressional representative Bill Foster appears to be comfortably spending campaign money outside his own campaign, as he lacks an opponent capable of credibly threatening his seat.
Running in the 11th Congressional District of Illinois for the House of Representatives, Foster’s campaign has spent $1,451,981 so far for his 2020 cycle according to the Federal Election Commission.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger showed an immense change in campaign fund spending for the current 2019-2020 Illinois’ 16th Congressional District election campaign, which includes a decrease of media and advertising and an increase in fundraising spending.
During his previous campaign, Kinzinger’s campaign budget consisted of spending $788,336 toward media-related purchases. However, he has spent only $60,169 in media purchases and $28,459 in advertising purchases so far for his current campaign, which is a total of $88,628.
Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley has spent more than $631,000 so far as he runs for his seventh term as Illinois’ 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.
While the state of Illinois is often called an abortion “oasis” in the Midwest because of easier access to abortions than neighboring states, there are 86 crisis pregnancy centers – known as CPCs – compared with 25 abortion clinics in Illinois. Champaign has two of those centers.
U.S. Congressman Danny Davis, Democrat, of District 7 has occupied his seat in the House of Representatives for over 20 years. Davis was re-elected to his seat on earlier this month – defeating his opponent Republican Craig Cameron by more than 80 percent of the votes.
And each year, Davis has one of the lowest campaign spending and contribution amounts of the Illinois representatives, spending anywhere from $300,000 to $600,000 and raising as little as $200,000 and as much as $600,000.
A 2018 report from the House Committee on Ethics shows Democratic Representative Bobby Rush is still utilizing the federal campaign finance system to benefit his family despite following a 2016 questioning by the Federal Election Committee.
In 2016, the Federal Election Commission inquired into Rush’s campaign finance report due to vague categories of expenditures. Additionally, watchdog groups have questioned the large amounts of campaign money going to Rush’s family members.
In our “Uncharted Waters” series, The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting took at look at what’s behind the recent spike in irrigation, the lack of regulations around groundwater and stalled water supply planning efforts and the impact this will have on Illinois in the future.
Almost 1,000 pivots have been installed in counties statewide in the past four years as a result of higher crop prices and the demand of seed corn companies, an almost 20 percent increase in overall irrigation that equals the use of more than half a million people each year.
While Illinois is not currently facing a water crisis, highly populated areas with high growth — namely Chicagoland and Champaign County — are undergoing some levels of water conflict, partly because of agricultural irrigation. The State Water Survey projects that in the coming decades, Illinois will require 20 to 50 percent more water. But planning for the increase has been inadequate, largely due to a halt in planning because of the ongoing state budget crisis, government water experts say. In 2006, then-Governor Rod Blagojevich issued an executive order that the water survey and Illinois Department of Natural Resources would develop state and regional water supply plans for 10 regions of the state. However, only three of those plans were completed, and two were being developed when the Illinois Department of Natural Resources suspended all regional water supply planning activities in March 2015 because of a lack of funding from the state legislature.