Although Jesse Sullivan may have violated some campaign advertising rules, the Republican candidate for governor is not the first politician in Illinois to use public property for making campaign ads and he likely won’t be the last.
“I've run across a few cases of clear violations, such as electioneering via office phones or office computers, and a few fuzzier ones like using official seals on private Facebook pages,” said Brian J. Gaines, a professor in the department of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Gaines was responding to a report by Edgar County Watchdog that accused Sullivan of improper electioneering after he appeared in an advertisement with a lineup of sheriffs in uniform who had their publicly owned vehicles behind them in the endorsement.
“I'd be quite surprised if law enforcement officials get into trouble for wearing uniforms while engaging in electioneering,” Gaines told the Madison-St. Clair Record. “My sense is that they get very wide latitude on uniform wearing like not needing to remove [their uniform] the instant they go off duty.”
However, the use of police cars may be an exception.
“Including state, county, or city-owned vehicles in an ad is probably more problematic even if there is no particular expense to taxpayers, such as gas money to get to and from the ad shoot,” Gaines said.
Under Illinois election code, no public funds are allowed to be used to urge any elector to vote for or against any candidate or proposition or be appropriated for political or campaign purposes to any candidate or political organization.
“As a very general matter, incumbents have numerous opportunities to use public space and property to promote themselves in gray ways that look like electioneering but can be defended as outreach to the public,” Gaines said.
For example, former U.S. President Barack Obama announced his campaign for office at the old State Capitol, according to media reports.
“I don't know precedents on the use of public locales as backdrops,” Gaines added. “I think that filming without specific permits is probably tolerated, and it is increasingly easy to fake backdrops so that one can appear to be at, say, the Lincoln Memorial without actually being there.”