Before left-wing activist Bob Creamer escorted his wife, Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky to the Obama state dinner, before he penned his blue print for the socialist agenda from his federal prison cell, before he committed felony bank fraud and was indicted on 34 counts involving misuse of $2.4 million, this Saul Alinsky disciple reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from a campaign finance scam that illegally funneled money from deep-pocket Democrat donors and labor unions to targeted congressional campaigns.
Creamer left his position as head of the ACORN-affiliated Citizen Action/Illinois in 1997 after financial irregularities at the activist organization garnered the attention of federal investigators. Despite the ongoing federal investigation, Creamer turned to political consulting, bringing his bare-knuckle ACORN tactics to bear on behalf of numerous Democratic candidates like indicted former Governor Rod Blagojevich. In the 2002 election cycle, Creamer’s Strategic Consulting Group was paid over half a million dollars by the Blagojevich campaign. Strategic Consulting also did campaign work for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and others, all while the feds pursued their criminal investigation.
During the period when Creamer was running Strategic Consulting Group the firm served as the primary vendor for several identically-structured campaign committees formed for the express purpose of supporting Democrat candidacies in circumvention of federal campaign laws.
In 2005, the Federal Election Commission found that the 17th District Victory Fund, established in Illinois’ seventeenth Congressional district had broken the law when it paid $225,000 in “consulting” fees to Creamer. Instead of providing the consulting services claimed on federal disclosures, Creamer set up a separate political operation that promoted re-election of Democratic Congressman Lane Evans who was a regular target for defeat by the GOP. (For copies of the original FEC complaint, finding of fact and consent judgment, see here, here, and here.
The Victory Fund was able to collect huge amounts of money from individuals and special interests who were either prohibited from donating to Evans’ campaign or had already given the maximum allowed. They then spent that money on what were claimed to be “party building activities,” such as get-out-the-vote drives, but what was, in reality illegally coordinated campaigning directly for Evans.
Because the 17th District Victory Fund was essentially a coordinated adjunct of the Evans campaign, donors were able to circumvent laws that limited campaign donations. In particular, labor unions were able to give maximum donations to the Evans campaign directly and then re-ante to the Victory Fund. The FEC noted that the “17th District Victory Fund…violated 2 U.S.C. 441a(f) by accepting excessive contributions, in particular from the Laborers Political League, AFL-CIO, Carpenters’ Union and UFCW.
In addition to the laundry list of other labor organizations that funded this corrupt enterprise, the Victory Fund was also the beneficiary of donations from Democratic Congressmen Barney Frank and Charlie Rangel, as well as convicted Illinois political manipulator Stuart Levine whose corrupt activities helped bring down Blagojevich.
But the major source of funding for the 17th District Victory Fund was the 17th District “Non-Federal” Victory Fund, a state political organization that was able to collect limitless donations from rich individuals and then funnel the money to the “federal” victory fund, ostensibly for the aforementioned “party building” activities. These “non-federal” dollars were then entirely transferred into the “federal” victory fund, thus laundering further illegal donations to the 17thDistrict Victory Fund to fund unlawful political activity. Among these donors was reclusive multi-millionaire Fred Eychaner who has given tens of millions to Democrats in recent years. In 2000, Eychaner had made the maximum donation of $4,000 to Lane Evans (primary and general elections) and then coughed up another $60,000 to the 17th District Non-Federal Victory Fund. These dollars then were transferred into the federal fund that paid Creamer to illegally coordinate campaign activities wit the Evans campaign.
As a result of this illegal activity, the FEC leveled over $200,000 in fines on the 17th District Victory Fund and Congressman Evans’ campaign, but not before Creamer had been paid his fees to run the illegal political operation in the 1998, 2000 and 2002 election cycles.
During the same election cycles, identical “Victory Fund” operations were set up in Illinois’ ninth (Congresswoman Schakowsky’s own district), tenth and fifteenth Congressional districts with almost identical reports and consistent overlap of donors and vendors. They followed the same pattern of establishing both a “federal” and “non-federal” committee with the unlimited “non-federal” dollars being dumped into the “federal” account that would then pay for political activities, particularly to Creamer’s consulting businesses.
In Schakowsky’s Ninth District, in 2002 the victory fund received $125,000 from Rod Blagojevich’s gubernatorial campaign with over $75,000 going to one of Creamer’s firms, Mobilize, Inc.
In the three cycles, the “Victory Funds” paid Creamer-controlled companies, Strategic Consulting and Mobilize, Inc. over $400,000 in consulting fees–the same pattern specifically cited as illegal activity by the FEC in the 17th Congressional District. While Creamer was not a specific target of the FEC complaint and was not fined by the Commission, his activities were extensively cited by the FEC as an example of illegally coordinated campaign activities that led directly to the Commission’s judgment against the campaign committees.
During the time that federal investigators were compiling the evidence of financial crimes that would send Creamer to prison, he was involved in other illegal activities that violated campaign finance laws as determined by the Federal Election Commission. These activities included avoiding limits on donations by individuals and unions and creating a funding mechanism that used smoke and mirrors to avoid detection.