Thread by @ampersoned

Going to do a thread on Paul Vallas's top donors according to Illinois Sunshine, chipping away as I have time.

Michael Keiser ($700,000) made his billions from Recycled Paper Greetings before developing golf courses. He's 1 of 6 Field Museum trustees who are AEI members and gave to INCS, the far right Heartland Institute, and many of the same Republicans as Dick Uihlein, including Trump.

INCS = Illinois Network of Charter Schools
AEI = American Enterprise Institute

James N. Perry, Jr. ($450,000) is one of several from private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners. He focuses on telecom and media and gave to many moderate Republicans with his partners. IL teachers' pension has invested with them. He chairs the Archdiocese's school board.

Here's Perry teaming up with school privatizers Paul Vallas, Betsy DeVos, Arne Duncan, and Gery Chico (who endorsed Vallas today) plus Geno Fernandez and Vallas donor Noel Moore at a 2021 event in honor of the Superintendent of the Archdiocese of Chicago

That event just so happened to be highlighted in Politico's Illinois Playbook
politico.com/newsletters/il…

Here's Noel Moore ($200,000) with Jim Perry again on the board of the FedSoc-linked Lumen Christi Institute at UChicago. Moore was a CBOT exec, and trades commodities with fellow Vallas donor Burt Gutterman (pictured). He gives to many of the same Republicans as Dick Uihlein.

Here's Gutterman sharing his thoughts on policing

Found a photo of Noel

FedSoc = Federalist Society
CBOT = Chicago Board of Trade

Joseph C. Grendys ($200,000) is the billionaire owner of chicken processor Koch Foods whose plants in Mississippi and elsewhere are known for price fixing, discriminating against Black farmers, and exploiting undocumented workers. He's given to Republicans where he does business.

On Koch Foods' discrimination against Black farmers
propublica.org/article/how-a-…

Paul J. Finnegan ($200,000) is co-founder/co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners, manages Harvard's endowment, leads multimillion $ campaigns for school privatization (Stand for Children) with Canning, Griffin, Zell, Crowns, and Pritzkers, and funds moderate GOPers with MDP partners

Finnegan also helped facilitate the preschool expansion P3 under Rahm Emanuel.
chicagoreporter.com/investors-earn…

Finnegan is on the Teach for America board. Vallas donor Deborah Quazzo, an edtech VC, was on its Chicago board and the Board of Dean's Advisors at Harvard Business School. She resigned from Rahm's school board for steering business to her companies amid the CPS bribery scandal.

Quazzo shared a tenure on the school board with David Vitale, who was brought into CPS administration despite no experience by Arne Duncan. He worked for MDP predecessor First Chicago and then as CBOT exec like Moore and Gutterman. He too left amid scandal. More were implicated.

In case you're curious about the blue sky thinking of an edtech VC like Quazzo (in this case Ryan Craig whose background is a bit concerning)
techcrunch.com/2017/02/16/wha…

Back to Vitale for a second. He led Urban Partnership Bank, a failed community development bank. Can you see what's at stake with municipal bank proposals?

An update on Jim Perry: