Five weeks into a four-year term, Mayor Lori Lightfoot is holding another fundraiser Wednesday to add to the nearly $400,000 she has already raised since her historic election.
The latest fundraiser is being hosted by Chicago restaurant owner Carmen Rossi. Tickets ranged from $250 to $5,000. The location is being disclosed only to those who returned an RSVP.
Since taking office on May 20, Lightfoot has taken fundraising trips to Los Angeles and New York City — with stops to have dinner with Oprah Winfrey and to appear on Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show.
While headlining a Palm Springs fundraiser for former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s PAC in a town with an all LGBTQ City Council, Lightfoot prospected for her own donors among California’s upscale gay community.
Those contacts are expected to pay off handsomely in the future for Chicago’s first openly gay mayor.
But the movers and shakers at home are already showing their love.
Since her landslide victory over Toni Preckwinkle on April 2, Lightfoot has raked in close to $400,000. That’s more than enough to off-set the $250,000 she loaned her own mayoral campaign, which was languishing in single-digits until the infamous, Nov. 29 raid on the City Hall and ward offices of Ald. Edward Burke (14th).
In recent days and weeks, Lightfoot has reported a $100,000 contribution from Chicago financier Lester Crown.
The Crown family — a business, finance and philanthropic pillar of Chicago — contributed $415,300 to Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral campaigns and was among Bill Daley’s biggest donors until Daley failed to make the mayoral runoff.
Lightfoot also reported receiving $25,000 each from Dan Tierney of Wicklow Capital and from Jennifer Steans of Financial Investment Corp.
The mayor got $10,000 from Rocky Wirtz, who infuriated Emanuel by writing a transition memo to Lightfoot arguing that relations between Emanuel and the business community were “frequently strained, often contentious and counter-productive.”
The $10,000 club also included the Chicago Bulls, the Illinois Retail Gaming and Operators Association, JMB Realty co-founder Robert Judelson, attorneys Larry Rogers Jr., Robert Clifford, Tyron Fahner, Dan Kotin, Joe Power, Patrick Salvi, Tom Tully and Antonio Romanucci.
Dave Mellet, Lightfoot’s full-time political director, said the mayor’s decision to keep fundraising and maintain a political office at 100 West Kinzie staffed by two full-time employees is not at all surprising.
Emanuel never did it, only because his vast Rolodex and infamous fundraising muscle allowed him to raise vast sums of money on a dime.
“The campaign fund has paid the remainder of the expenses that we incurred in the run-off election especially. And any money beyond that will be used to further the mayor’s agenda,” Mellett said.
“Our goal is to help the mayor do what she needs to do to pass important legislation . . . and help move Chicago forward in the next few years. I don’t think it’s been non-stop. I don’t know that she’ll necessarily maintain the same pace of activity throughout the remainder of her term. But when she went to New York and California, the political side paid for those trips. And it will help the mayor when she needs to reach out to people and ask for support on certain agenda items or wants people to be aware of what’s going on with legislation or things that need peoples’ voices involved in the process.”
During the first quarter of this year that included her mayoral campaign, Lightfoot raised $4.6 million, and spent $4.4 million. She closed the quarter with $397,480 in cash on hand.
