Gov. JB Pritzker and wife gave big for DNC, which raised $97M in all

CHICAGO — When Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker helped land the 2024 Democratic National Convention for Chicago, he vowed city and state taxpayers wouldn't be left with the bill and that he wouldn't pick up the whole tab himself.

While federal campaign finance disclosures filed this week show Pritzker was correct on those counts, the billionaire governor and first lady MK Pritzker were still the largest individual contributors to the event. The couple, through their trust fund, shelled out $5.6 million — nearly 6% of the $97 million raised by the convention's local host committee.

The committee, Development Now for Chicago, reported spending about $83 million in the lead-up to, during and in the month following the four-day August convention at the United Center, where Vice President Kamala Harris made history as the first Black and Asian American woman to accept a major party's presidential nomination.

In comparison, the host committee for July's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where former President Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination for the third straight election, reported raising $92 million while spending $88 million, according to its federal filing.

"From day one, Gov. Pritzker was fully committed to making sure the 2024 DNC was a success both in the convention hall and across our entire city. And it was," Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Christina Amestoy wrote in an email. "The 2024 Democratic National Convention not only showcased how Democrats are delivering but showed Chicago off to the world as well — bringing visitors, investments and attention across neighborhoods. Thanks to the hard work of so many to deliver a successful 2024 DNC, Chicago will benefit for years to come."

The spending on the DNC resulted in an economic impact to the city of $371.4 million that produced $34.9 million in federal tax dollars and $28.7 million in state and local taxes, according to a report released Thursday by the host committee and the city's tourism arm, Choose Chicago.

Economists, however, have been broadly skeptical about claims in such reports, specifically saying the financial benefits to local economies from hosting national political conventions or other mega-events are typically overstated. While business leaders generally gave the convention high marks for burnishing the city's reputation, the president of the Illinois Restaurant Association said Thursday that the short-term benefits of the DNC didn't pan out for the industry.

As of Sept. 30, the host committee had a little more than $6 million in outstanding debts and bills, with $14 million cash on hand, according to its filing with the Federal Election Commission. Any money left over once all the bills are paid will be donated to charity locally, host committee spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein Jarvis said.

In addition to the $5.6 million that Pritzker and his wife contributed out of the Jay Robert Pritzker Revocable Trust, Pritzker's political campaign contributed nearly $127,000 more for the DNC, the records show.

Aside from the Pritzkers, another major contributor was the Democratic Governors Association, a group that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz led before joining the Democratic presidential ticket as Harris' running mate. The organization, which counts Pritzker as one of its major financial backers, chipped in $6 million for the DNC.

In addition to aggressive lobbying by Pritzker and other top Democrats, Chicago's deep roots with organized labor were a key to its selection as the host city.

Those ties were evident in large union contributions to the host committee, with $5.2 million from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and $3 million each from the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union and the Laborers' International Union of North America, among other organized labor organizations. Allies of Mayor Brandon Johnson chipped in as well. The American Federation of Teachers, which Johnson belonged to as a Chicago Teachers Union member and organizer, gave $525,000, and the Service Employees International Union gave $1 million.

Corporate Chicago also backed the event, with McDonald's giving $1.5 million and United Airlines giving more than $1 million, for instance.

The largest corporate contribution reported by the DNC host committee, nearly $2.3 million, came from Grosvenor Holdings, which is owned by Michael Sacks, an ally and adviser to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a prominent Democratic fundraiser. Sacks, who led the DNC host committee, gave, together with his wife, Cari, another $2.2 million, records show.

Fundraising for the DNC outstripped the committee's obligation to raise $85 million, which Edelstein Jarvis said, "speaks to the broad coalition of support that the convention was able to garner."

"Chicago was selected specifically for that reason, because we could bring together labor and the corporate community in Chicago and individual donors and folks from all across the country," she said.

Organizers said the total economic impact detailed in the report released Thursday, which was produced by the research company Tourism Economics, was the largest in DNC history.

In a statement from Choose Chicago, Pritzker said the proof of the convention's "rousing success" is "in the numbers, with millions in tax revenue generated and significant support for jobs, this success was made possible by the hard work of everyone involved."

Convention organizers spent $75.5 million within the city of Chicago itself, 69% of which was outside the central business district, according to the report.

Organizers had touted their efforts to engage individuals, companies and community groups in a range of spending and activities touching on all of Chicago's 77 community areas. They also promoted efforts to hire vendors run by women and minorities.

One of the convention's largest vendors, according to its federal filing, was Englewood-based Show Strategy, a Black-owned business that provided exposition services. The company was paid $6.6 million, records show.

Overall, the greater total economic impact compared with past conventions was partly because of more local spending by party organizations as well as a larger federal grant for security expenses. Federal authorities gave the cities of Chicago and Milwaukee $75 million each for this year's conventions, up from $50 million in 2016, the last previous year for in-person national political conventions.

More than $27 million of that grant money was slated to cover the city's own cost for Chicago police, fire, and emergency management workers, plus employees of the city's departments of Streets and Sanitation, Transportation and Water Management, who were deployed with salt and garbage trucks to help with street closures, according to records recently released from Johnson's Office of Budget and Management.

The records showed how much the city budgeted, not what was actually spent. Those records have not yet been released, making it unclear how much impact the $75 million in federal grant spending has actually had.

An additional $4.9 million of those funds was budgeted for pay, food, lodging and transportation for other police — including cops from Milwaukee, Illinois State Police troopers and officers from other local departments, the records showed. The city also expected police liability and "active assailant" insurance to cost $12.4 million.

The records, a heavily redacted version of which was previously shared with the news outlet The Triibe before the DNC, also showed the city planned to spend $26.5 million on equipment and supplies, including:

— Nearly $11 million for a new helicopter;

— $785,000 for police bicycles;

— $650,000 for five 18-foot-long cargo trucks;

— $250,000 for fully equipped Harley-Davidson police motorcycles;

— $130,000 for a Ford F-650 and attached box van;

— $95,000 for five all-terrain vehicles;

— $1.9 million for 1,800 new body cameras;

— $5.6 million for new and leased police radios;

— $555,000 for new phones and computers, and various trauma and first aid kits, hazmat team equipment and supplies, and safety gear.

Like Pritzker, Johnson hailed the DNC as a political and economic success for the city.

"Once again we demonstrated that in Chicago, we make no little plans," the mayor said. "2024 marked the 26th time we have hosted a major political party's nominating convention in this city, and the figures in this report make it clear that the event was transformative. ... We should all be proud of this monumental accomplishment."

But Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, said many restaurateurs were disappointed that the 2024 convention wasn't more similar to the 1996 DNC when conventioneers popped in and out of the United Center to drink or dine, compounding the already-high season of July and August.

Instead, those who went through the trouble of waiting 45 minutes or an hour in the security line to get into the United Center this year stayed put, Toia said. Those who held private events for convention goers generally broke even, he said. Regular downtown workers also opted to work from home early in the week thanks to the uncertainty of security restrictions, worries about protests or road closures.

"A lot of businesses, like law offices and banking industry businesses, told their team members to stay home," he said. "Because no one knew what the convention was going to be like, Sunday, Monday, they were working from home, so you might've only had 80,000 people working downtown."

As a result, bars and restaurants weren't getting business from people who worked downtown or attended the convention, Toia said.

"If you had a breakfast or lunch place, you did OK, you had a dinner place," you didn't, he added. "Long term, I gotta say the DNC and the governor and the mayor pulled off a great event, a great infomercial, so hopefully we get more visitors coming back to Chicago because they saw how great our city is."

In terms of lodging, Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, said that while "it wasn't a sell-out," it was a good week. He said compared with the same four days the previous year, hotels saw a 12% increase in occupancy and a more than double increase in revenue per available room.

"The fact that Chicago executed a flawless event, that's what's going to pay dividends for years to come," he said.

Still, while it's routine for organizers and civic leaders to boast of widespread and long-lasting economic benefits from political conventions and other large-scale events, such claims generally don't bear out on deeper analysis, said economics professor Lauren Heller, dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College in Georgia.

Among other issues, economic impact reports tend to ignore issues such as whether residents of a city stay home rather than dine out while a convention is in town or whether the influx of conventioneers causes potential vacationers to go elsewhere, said Heller, who has studied political conventions and reviewed the Chicago DNC economic impact report.

The models used also typically don't factor in some costs associated with hosting such an event, such as the time residents and visitors waste sitting in traffic or navigating heightened security, she said.

"There might be other reasons to hold events like this," Heller said. "I just don't think economic impact is the reason."