Four years after giving back a $500 campaign contribution from a controversial former Chicago Board of Education member, Paul Vallas’s mayoral bid has accepted a much bigger sum — $7,500 — from Deborah Quazzo ahead of the February election, records show.
Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed Quazzo to the school board in 2013, but the wealthy investment banker left after the Chicago Sun-Times detailed her stakes in companies doing business with Chicago Public Schools. The CPS inspector general later found that Quazzo had engaged in “horrible” ethical violations.
Vallas returned the $500 contribution from Quazzo in 2019 after WBEZ asked him about that support. At the time, Vallas told the station that Quazzo had donated through his campaign website and that he would return the money from her “to avoid any appearance of conflict.”
But in the campaign finance disclosure filed Friday by the Vallas For Mayor committee, the candidate reported receiving $5,000 from Quazzo on Tuesday.
That followed a separate, $2,500 contribution from Quazzo to Vallas on Jan. 17, according to state election board records.
On the same day, Quazzo’s husband also gave another $10,000 to Vallas.
The Vallas campaign did not immediately reply to messages about the contributions on Friday. Quazzo did not respond to emails sent to her at GSV Ventures, the venture capital firm where she is managing partner.
Vallas is one of eight candidates challenging first-term Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the Feb. 28 election. Four years ago, he finished ninth out of 14 candidates, with barely 5% of the vote, in the first-round voting.
Vallas was CPS chief executive under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, and he was a losing candidate for the Democratic nomination for Illinois governor in 2002.
In addition to the most recent contribution from Quazzo, Vallas on Friday reported getting $150,000 from former Wheels Inc. CEO James Frank — who recently gave that exact amount to Lightfoot’s reelection campaign, too.
Also this week, Vallas accepted $50,000 from Shawn Fagan, the top lawyer at Citadel — the hedge fund that moved its headquarters from Chicago to Miami last year — and $25,000 from Ron Gidwitz, who was Illinois finance chair for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium under Trump.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team. Follow him on Twitter @dmihalopoulos.
