Mayor Brandon Johnson reported raising nearly $300,000 in the first three months of the year, a sizable chunk of which came from gambling interests that want Chicago to legalize sweepstakes machines, as well as some longtime friends and political allies.
The mayor’s political haul means he has about $1.16 million in the bank at the near-halfway point of his first term in office, which is about how much ex-Mayor Lori Lightfoot had at the same juncture, state campaign records show. While Johnson’s fundraising appeared relatively healthy, so too were the efforts of other Chicago politicians, including some potentially eyeing a bid to take on Johnson for mayor in 2027.
Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who has been widely discussed as a potential mayoral candidate, raised nearly $528,000 between January and the end of March. His support included cash from construction and trade unions that have backed him for years, leaving the first-term secretary of state with $3.7 million in his political campaign fund. Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who ran for mayor in 2019, raised about $323,000 during the quarter and had $1.3 million in the bank at the start of April.
It’s not surprising that both statewide officeholders ratcheted up their campaign fundraising operations: Mendoza and Giannoulias are both up for reelection to their state offices in 2026 and are approaching endorsement and petition circulation season.
Paul Vallas, who narrowly lost to Johnson in the 2023 mayoral runoff campaign, has kept his Vallas for Mayor political committee active but has no money in the account. City Clerk Anna Valencia, who is also thought to be a potential mayoral contender, raised about $66,000 in the most recent quarter, giving her about $116,000 in the bank.
With two years until the election, the horse race over the political funds of Johnson and possible mayoral hopefuls is hardly indicative of what the landscape will be in 2027. But it does provide a snapshot for what is widely expected to be a competitive race to run City Hall.
Johnson’s latest batch of campaign finance reports, which were filed this week, paint a far less grim picture than his previous two quarters, even as accounting snafus and ethical questions continue to beset his political fund.
Last year, faced with scrutiny over an astonishingly low fourth-quarter haul, officials with Johnson’s campaign fund said the mayor actually raised about $200,000 during that period but that campaign officials didn’t cash the checks because they wanted to have enough time to “properly vet contributions and ensure compliance” with recently altered campaign finance rules. If accurate, that means Johnson may have raised only about $60,000 in additional contributions this most recent quarter.
Regardless of exactly when the checks came in, a majority of Johnson’s contributions reported for the first quarter of 2025 came from contributors outside Chicago, the campaign records show. A total of $173,000 came from donors who provided addresses outside the city while $114,000 came from supporters with Chicago addresses, the records show.
Since becoming mayor, Johnson’s campaign fund has been faced with several controversies, forcing the mayor’s campaign operation to file several corrections for missing spending on his transition and his inauguration as well as omitting contributions from several large labor unions. The mayor also faced fines from the state elections board after his run for the Cook County Board for filing contribution reports late, which his spokespeople blamed on clerical problems and a small campaign staff. He ended up paying just shy of $18,000 for those violations.
Johnson also faced questions about potential conflicts of interests between him and his political fund’s chairwoman Tara Stamps — an ally and official with the Chicago Teachers Union who also succeeded him on the County Board — which led her to announce she would step down. But that has not happened, state records show.
The mayor has separately been dinged for taking campaign donations from lobbyists and city contractors, forcing him to return tens of thousands of contributions.
In the most recent quarter, one sizable reported contribution that drew questions was a $25,000 January donation from the Illinois Realtor Political Action Committee, which has opposed the mayor’s failed ballot referendum to hike the real estate transfer tax, known as Bring Chicago Home. A week after reporting the contribution, Johnson’s campaign fund reported it had refunded the donation.
But in a statement, the Illinois Realtors said it never gave $25,000 to Johnson’s campaign fund and never had it refunded either. Instead, the statement said, the group gave the mayor’s inauguration committee, Chicago For the People, $25,000 back in May 2023, a check that was cashed the following month.
“The recent filing regarding contributions to the Friends of Brandon Johnson campaign committee contained inaccuracies,” the statement said. “We remain committed to transparency and accuracy in the reporting of contributions.”
Though reporting errors crop up from time to time for most candidates, it’s unclear how a check supposedly made out to a separate committee in 2023 got reported this past January. Spokespeople for Johnson’s political campaign fund did not return requests for comment Thursday.
Of the cash Johnson’s campaign fund did receive, nearly $50,000 came from groups connected to the video gambling industry, which has a vested interest in Chicago legalizing sweepstakes machines. First reported by Crain’s, the contributions from January include $24,700 from P-IL Strategies, $13,000 from National Association of Promotional Retailers and $5,800 each from Francesca NVJ Consulting and GIL INV Holdings. All four entities are affiliated with video gambling interests — including Maze Jackson, who is a registered lobbyist with the city, state records show.
Chicago Board of Ethics Executive Director Steve Berlin said in a statement Thursday that the donation from Jackson’s organization did not appear to run afoul of a 2024 law banning lobbyists from donating to mayors because that law only banned individual lobbyists from donating to political campaigns, not lobbying entities. He added that the potential conflict of a lobbyist donating via an entity they “control,” rather than own directly, has not yet been considered by the ethics board.
Also in the campaign finance records, Cook County Commissioner Stamps is still listed as Johnson’s fundraising chair. Stamps’ chairmanship posed a potential conflict because at the same time she held that post, Stamps also was a Chicago Teachers Union employee while the mayor, a former teacher and CTU organizer, oversaw negotiations for a new teachers contract.
In mid-February when the connection was first reported by the Sun-Times, Stamps confirmed to both the Tribune and Sun-Times that she would step down as Johnson’s finance chair. But no records have been filed showing her doing so. State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich said such filings are typically posted within a day of being filed.
Stamps did not return a request for comment Thursday. She is running for reelection to the Cook County Board in 2026.
Johnson also continued to receive support from the CTU. The CTU in January contributed $2,000 to Johnson’s campaign, while affiliates gave another $1,500. The mayor also received $12,000 from My Wellness Community Corp. The business, which was recently renamed Method Health Corp., was founded by Charles Smith, Johnson’s lead business liaison and leader of World Business Chicago.
