Some of the primary races in early March were the most expensive in state history. $10 million went to just two races for the legislature. Governor Bruce Rauner or his campaign fund shoveled much of the money into those record-spending primaries. That led to calls for more transparency. Rauner won't say if that's something he supports.
"I'm sure a lot of people have different ideas about campaign finance and campaign finance reform. That's all lovely. That's a great topic for another day. That’s not something I'm going to talk about today," he says.
Sarah Brune is with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. She says a law passed last year makes it possible to see what Super-PACs paid for primary commercials. Brune wants quicker disclosure of candidate election spending.
"If you check out the spending for this election for the primaries, you can see that what campaigns spend on their own candidate doesn't have to be reported until their quarterly reports. Those don't come out until April 15 ... I think that's a huge issue because if a committee is buying ads on behalf of its own candidate, you're not going to know how much they spent until months later,” she says.
There's a similar delay for the general election. That's in early November. Candidate reporting won't be due until next January.
