Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn
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Chicago’s first school board elections are getting expensive, with nearly $4 million pouring directly into candidates’ coffers and almost $3 million spent separately by pro-school choice super PACs as of Oct. 28.
Super PACs, which face no contribution limits and are not allowed to coordinate with candidates, have sent direct mail, texts, and run political ads supporting seven school board candidates.
The Chicago Teachers Union and a number of groups allied with and funded by the union have spent at least $1.5 million directly on CTU-endorsed candidates, according to campaign finance disclosures.
In eight of the 10 school board races, the CTU-backed candidate has raised the most cash. CTU-endorsed Rev. Robert Jones, Felix Ponce, and Jason Dones top the list of candidates citywide who have received the most direct cash and in-kind contributions, with a quarter of a million dollars or more each, based on the most recent data reported to the Illinois Board of Elections.
The candidate with the most money so far, however, is Bruce Leon, who is self-funding his campaign and loaned himself $550,000.
As the pace of spending has picked up, so has the heat in a war of words between the teachers union and school choice proponents, who have decried greater scrutiny of charters, selective enrollment, and magnet programs in the city amid a push to revitalize neighborhood schools.
The union and its supporters held a Monday press conference in front of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools’ downtown offices, calling out large checks the network’s super PAC got from wealthy individuals outside of Illinois — including Netflix executive Reed Hastings, a major Democratic Party donor and charter school supporter — and vowed to push for legislation curbing such spending. Two other super PACs have spent money on Chicago’s school board races, Urban Center Action and Parents for Great Schools Illinois.
But some school board candidates have decried how CTU is spending money in the election. The union and allied groups, such as Chicago Working Families, have sent mailers presenting candidates they don’t support as puppets of former President Donald Trump and tying them to Project 2025, the conservative playbook on how to remake the federal government. The mailers have incensed candidates who say they are registered Democrats known for yearslong involvement in liberal causes.
The charter network shot back this week, arguing the union is borrowing from Trump’s playbook with a divisive effort to distribute “fake news.” The group said the union — in close alignment with a network of groups which it has helped fund — is spending big to cement its influence on the board.
Chicagoans will elect 10 school board members from 10 geographic districts this Nov. 5. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU employee and close union ally, will appoint 11 people to serve on a hybrid board for two years. In 2026, all 21 seats will be up for election.
In an interview with Chalkbeat, Hilario Dominguez, the union’s political coordinator, said the union has had to step up its spending to keep up with the influx of cash from the charter network and Urban Center, another pro-school choice group led by former UNO charter network CEO Juan Rangel and affiliated with former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, who lost the 2023 mayoral race to Johnson.
“We’re being forced to spend because they are outraising us,” he said. “Our spending is in response to their war chest.”
CTU bankrolled effort that removed 12 candidates from ballot
The latest campaign spending disclosure data also offers the first clear evidence that the union paid several law firms to mount challenges to the ballot petitions of numerous candidates, successfully knocking 12 of them off the ballot this past summer.
The union paid a collective $40,000 to Stephen Fine, Mike Kreloff, and Sorling Northrup, the firm where Kevin Morphew is an attorney, according to campaign disclosures filed Oct. 15. Fine, Kreloff, Morphew, and one other attorney, Michael Kasper, were listed as representing people challenging 19 candidates.
The CTU also paid legal fees to Sorling Northrup on behalf of Dones and Jones, both of whom fought challenges to their own petitions.
The Illinois Network of Charter Schools has called the union’s spending to remove candidates from the ballot “hypocritical,” coming from an organization that has long advocated for turning decisions on who serves on the board over to Chicago residents.
Dominguez declined to comment on that spending but argued the issue is a distraction from the real problem with the board races: a massive influx in large donations from billionaires the CTU argues have little connection to local schools. The union says these donors have a shadowy, pro-Trump agenda to shutter public schools, expand charters, and boost private schools.
Andrew Broy, the head of the charter network, said claiming that candidates backed by the group are Trump supporters or pushing Project 2025 is “absurd.”
“If anyone is trying to buy the election, it’s the CTU,” he said.
Project 2025 mailers ignite misinformation charges
In the past month, Chicagoans’ mailboxes have been filled with mail from candidates running for school board — and from their opponents.
One paid for by the Chicago Teachers Union pictures a faceless puppet with the claim that “Donald Trump and out-of-state billionaires are pulling the strings” of certain candidates.
One of the candidates targeted by these mailers is District 2’s Leon, a retired human resource company executive whose campaign is entirely self-funded.
Asked about evidence that the targeted school board candidates are connected to Trump, Dominguez at the CTU said the mailers are fair game. He noted that some contributors to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, such as Arkansas-based Walmart heir Jim Walton, have supported efforts to elect Republicans in the past. Walton has given $738,000 to the charter group’s independent expenditure committee in 2024.
The Waltons have a varied track record of giving, with charter schools and environmental conservation among their top causes. (The Walton Family Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat.)
Dominguez also pointed to candidate endorsements by the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute and, in a social media post the CTU has circulated, by the Chicago Republican Party. The Chicago Republican Party has said it is not endorsing any Chicago school board candidates and the post was not authorized by party leadership.
Still, Dominguez argues that some candidates’ pro-school choice message echoes the education policy proposals in Project 2025, which calls specifically for expanding tax-credit programs that allow families to send their children to private schools, like one that sunset in Illinois last year.
Carlos Rivas, a candidate in District 3, said the CTU-funded fliers targeting him — a lifelong registered Democrat who said he already cast a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris — are “shameful.”
“I am a gay Latino man who grew up in poverty, and I am being called a Trump puppet,” he said. “It’s sad how much money is being spent on these ads.”
Rivas raised about $60,000 as of Oct. 28, with about half coming from Jim Frank, an automotive fleet leasing executive who has also donated to the charter school network’s political fund. Most of Rivas’ remaining donations are less than $1,000 from individuals, including $250 from Miguel del Valle, the former Democratic state legislator and school board president.
Rivas’ opponent, Dones, has received more than $250,000 in donations and in-kind support from the CTU’s two PACs and union allies United Working Families and Grassroots PAC. He said the recent influx of money came after spending by the charter network’s super PAC in support of his opponent led to the lifting of a state campaign contribution cap.
But the totals do not include roughly $280,000 spent in the District 3 race by the two pro-school choice super PACs in support of Rivas. Rivas, a former CPS teacher, said he doesn’t control or coordinate with the charter network on its spending backing his campaign. He said he is a strong proponent of strengthening neighborhood schools — while maintaining selective enrollment and other options.
“I am someone who does believe in protecting choices for families, and that doesn’t mean just charters,” he said.
Dones said he is proud that the CTU, SEIU, which represents some support staff in CPS, and other unions rallied to keep his campaign viable. He said his candidacy has come under attack as well, in the form of text messages that said he would do the bidding of Mayor Johnson if elected to the board.
“I’m running in a district where the line is so clear,” Dones said. “Against me is someone almost entirely funded by people who support privatizing schools.”
Asked about his stance on private school vouchers, Rivas said his focus is on equitable funding for CPS.
Matt Dietrich, a spokesman for the Illinois Board of Elections, said his agency does not get involved in evaluating the veracity of political advertising. It only investigates campaign finance violations when people file complaints. He said no formal complaints have yet been filed in the Chicago school board elections.
The elections board, however, has reached out to the CTU to ask how its two separate political action committees are different; state rules do not allow separate PACs for the same purpose.
Candidates running for office in Illinois are bound by limits on how much they can raise, such as $6,900 from an individual contributor, or $68,500 from a political action committee. But as soon as the spending by super PACs, which face no such limits, exceeds $100,000 in a certain district, the caps for all candidates in that district are lifted. Those caps have since been lifted in all but one of Chicago’s school board districts.
Teachers union wants limits to out-of-state spending on school board races
At Monday’s downtown press conference, the union and its allies doubled down on ringing the alarm on charter advocates’ spending, which they described as a bid by billionaires to “buy” seats on the school board.
State lawmakers, such as Sen. Robert Martwick, one of the architects of a 2021 law that cleared the way for an elected school board in Chicago, vowed to take action to limit such spending in future elections. They did not share a specific bill but suggested legislation could be modeled on cities where local candidates only receive a set amount of taxpayer funding to campaign — or could take the form of limiting contributions from non-Illinois residents and requiring candidates to disclose their top five donors on all materials.
“This type of money pouring in our school board elections is shameful. What are they trying to do? What are they trying to buy?” said state Rep. Lilian Jiménez.
Several CTU-endorsed school board candidates also attended the event.
“CPS ain’t for sale today, tomorrow, and not forever,” said Jones, a school board candidate in District 10.
Campaign finance filings show Jones has raked in more than $300,000 in donations and in-kind contributions, primarily from the CTU — the most of any candidate in District 10. However, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Urban Center superPACs spent $250,000 to support another District 10 candidate, Karin Norington-Reaves.
Jones told Chalkbeat the influx of financial support has allowed him to send mailers and hand out fliers with the help of some 40 volunteers he said his campaign has enlisted.
Norington-Reaves was targeted with a CTU-funded flier linking her to Trump. She said the mailer was “gross” and disturbing in a highly polarized and volatile political climate in the days leading up to the presidential election.
“I am a lifelong Democrat,” she said. “I have never pulled a Republican ballot in my life, and the worst part is the CTU knows that.”
She said she is pushing back on the negative ads in community forums, on social media, and via phone-banking and door-knocking. Norington-Reaves, a nonprofit CEO, said that after decades working in public service, her campaign has drawn varied support, including from an “anti-CTU coalition” concerned about the union’s influence expanding beyond the mayor’s office.
“I have a very large network,” she said. “The people who are supporting me are doing so because of who I am.”
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.
