Election

Campaign notebook: Money raised, spent in 37th state senate race

Election 2024
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Winning the Republican nomination — and essentially general election — to the 37th state Senate seat ended up costing Win Stoller’s campaign a pretty penny.

Stoller, the incumbent and a businessman from Germantown Hills, won the primary against Dixon businessman Brett Nicklaus by 533 votes, 11,170 to 10,637.

According to financial reports covering April 1 to June 30, the Stoller campaign had $250,756.48 in expenditures and ended up with $164,338.09 left over.

The Stoller campaign’s largest donors were $10,000 transfer from the Dan McConchie campaign, $7,000 from Parsons Cos. in Roanoke and $5,000 from Uftring Automall in East Peoria.

The Nicklaus campaign, by contrast, spent $55,578.01 over that period and had $2,564.41 left over.

Nicklaus’ campaign got an infusion of $25,000 from the JBD Lead Forward political action committee of LaGrange (JBD being James Brian Durkin, House Republican leader). The same PAC also gave Kyle Ham $42,7450 in the 105th statehouse race.

That dollar per vote ratio, by the way? Stoller spent $22.45 per vote, Nicklaus spent $5.23.

The race swung on geography. Stoller carried the six southern counties in the redrawn legislative district while Nicklaus carried the six northern counties.

74th race

Brad Fritts, who won the Republican primary for the 74th statehouse seat, ended up taking in $50,824 and spending $46,857 during the second quarter.

His opponent, Dixon Mayor Li Arellano Jr., had $54,991 in receipts and $74,802 in expenditures in the same quarter.

Fritts ended the quarter with $5,950 and Arellano with $1,594.

Republican central committees

The Illinois Republican central committees held reorganizational meetings to elect new leadership on Wednesday.  The State Central Committee is the governing board of the Illinois Republican Party. The newly elected members include Jan Weber of Geneseo in the 16th District and Chad Weaver of Erie in the 17th District.

Members of the Illinois GOP State Central Committee were elected by a weighted vote of precinct committeemen within the congressional districts.

Uncounted ballots

The Illinois State Board of Elections reported that there were 45,072 ballots that could not be counted during the primary. Most, nearly 42,142, were vote-by-mail requests that were not  returned.

Whiteside County had 93 ballots uncounted, 40 of which were unreturned mail ballots. Ogle had 23 such ballots, 21 of which were unreturned mail, Lee had 22, all of them unreturned mail ballots, and Carroll had 11 overall, 9 were unreturned mail ballots.

16th Congressional race

U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, who won the Republican primary for the seat that Adam Kinzinger is vacating, may have a general election opponent.

One potential opponent has filed: Elizabeth “Lisa” Haderlein went to Springfield to enter her petition on July 25. The Harvard resident even posted a photo of her posing with a Lincoln sculpture  after she was done. There has been one request to review her petition, to date.

According to the state board, Monday is the deadline for resolutions for established party candidates to file to fill a vacancy. As there wasn’t a Democratic primary in the 16th, there is a vacancy.

Campaign notebook is a periodic look at the 2022 election. Submit notices of public rallies and candidate meet’n’greets to news@saukvalley.com.