MAYOR’S CAMPAIGN CASH SOARS
As he prepares to make major O’Hare decisions, Rahm rakes in $ 125K in contributions from employees of United, American Airlines
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has raked in more than $ 125,000 in campaign contributions from 51 employees of United and American Airlines in recent months as he prepares to make pivotal decisions impacting O’Hare International Airport’s two largest carriers.
The number of United and American donors has soared fivefold since Emanuel’s last mayoral race, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of state campaign records indicates.
The huge jump comes as the winner of the February 2015 mayoral election will face a thicket of issues that affect O’Hare’s two major carriers: the renegotiation of lease agreements; growing demands for relief from new O’Hare jet noise; and rising complaints about additional O’Hare runway expansion planned for debut in 2020.
On Sept. 30, after a fundraiser organized by several United Airlines executives, the Emanuel campaign deposited $ 72,300 from 41 individual United executives — nearly two- thirds of whom reside outside Chicago, Chicago for Rahm Emanuel state records indicate.
On March 28, the campaign reaped $ 53,000 from 10 American Airlines honchos — all of whom live in other states, records show.
Each batch of individual contributions towers over the $ 10,500 limit on corporate contributions set by state fundraising limits. And they far exceed the corporate contributions to Emanuel by either airline, both of which mostly took a pass in this mayoral election as well as the 2011 one, State Board of Elections records indicate.
The airline executives’ contributions emerge as a well- oiled mayoral fundraising machine has pulled in more than $ 9 million for Emanuel’s 2015 race, including donations from such faraway contributors as New York fashion designer Calvin Klein and Hollywood legend Robert De Niro.
Steve Mayberry, Emanuel’s campaign spokesman, said the airline executives’ contributions conform with “the spirit and letter” of state law, as well as with an Emanuel executive order barring contributions from companies doing business with the city.
“No mayor has been as restrictive of the types of contributions he will allow to ensure there is no conflict of interest,’’ Mayberry said in an emailed statement.
Even so, David Melton, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, said the donations warrant a city inspector general’s probe into whether they constitute an “end run” around the mayor’s executive order.
And the mayor of Norridge, where some residents fear additional O’Hare runways will bring yet more jet noise, contends the contributions are so “bothersome.”
“This all stinks and that’s being nice,’’ Norridge Mayor James Chmura said.
Emanuel “is accepting contributions from two of the biggest airlines that do business in Chicago. He would say, ‘ They are not the company; they’re individuals.’ That’s a bunch of bull. That’s just another way of camouflaging it,’’ said Chmura, a former IRS agent. “If the mayor wanted to do the proper thing, he would give the money back.’’
Emanuel said Wednesday in a meeting with the Chicago Sun- Times editorial board that he suspected airline executive support was tied to his leadership of the city. He noted that his new budget — unveiled Wednesday, months after the airline executives’ contributions — proposes closing a tax loophole that had been reaping airlines $ 17 million a year.
“If it [ any contribution] was to influence a decision I made, in the budget book that’s in front of you is $ 17 million they rely on and I shut,’’ Emanuel said. “. . . I closed it in the very period of time they supported me.’’