For the first time in nearly two dozen years, Illinois residents — and Illinois drivers, perhaps most significantly — will have a new secretary of state.
As the polls closed Tuesday night, the race to replace Jesse White, the beloved politician who has overseen the secretary of state’s office since 1999, featured Chicago Democrat Alexi Giannoulias versus Bloomington Republican Dan Brady.
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Libertarian Party candidate Jon Stewart, a former professional wrestler from Deerfield, was also on the ballot.
The winner will head a sprawling operation with over 4,000 employees that arguably has the most interaction with the public of any state agency. It oversees driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, keeps track of business registrations, maintains an organ and tissue donation registry and operates public libraries, among other services.
Both candidates have a good relationship with White, though both said they would modernize and streamline the often time-consuming process of license renewals and other business overseen by the office.
White, the first Black politician to hold the position, regularly outperformed the rest of the Democratic ticket in statewide elections during his six consecutive terms.
White endorsed Giannoulias, a fellow Chicago Democrat, during the general election, though the 88-year-old politician did not back him during the primary earlier this year. He also offered praise for Brady, whom he has worked with for decades.
Giannoulias, who was Illinois treasurer from 2007 to 2011, was seen as a political up-and-comer before stepping away from electoral politics after losing a race to fill the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. He easily won the June primary over Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia, who was backed by White and Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
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The general election campaign has been far less contentious than the Democratic primary in which Giannoulias and Valencia accused each other of ethical shortcomings.
Giannoulias attacked Valencia for her husband’s lobbying activities, which seemed even more problematic given the secretary of state oversees lobbying in Illinois. As part of his campaign platform, Giannoulias promised to ban spouses from lobbying their partners’ offices, block politicians from receiving money from people who work for them and curtail unregistered lobbying.
Valencia had raised questions about Giannoulias’ involvement in his family’s failed bank.
Broadway Bank failed in 2010, roughly four years after Giannoulias left his position there as a senior loan officer. Loans given to crime figures during his tenure have hung over his political career since. Former U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk made it a campaign issue in his successful bid for U.S. Senate in 2010 and Valencia tried to make it one this spring.
Detractors also argue Giannoulias made missteps while treasurer in dealing with the state’s Bright Start college savings program.
The program lost about $150 million after the fund manager used by Giannoulias, OppenheimerFunds Inc., invested in volatile securities tied to the unstable housing market. He was able to recover about $77 million from OppenheimerFunds for more than 65,000 Bright Start investors and, in defending his approach to the Tribune, said that financial analysts gave his administration generally high marks for how it ran Bright Start.
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Since leaving the state treasurer’s office in 2011, Giannoulias has held positions on nonprofit and public agency boards. He headed the Illinois Community College Board, overseeing policies of the state’s two-year colleges from 2011 to 2015, and sat on the Chicago Public Library Board from 2018 until last year with some of the city’s civic elite.
Giannoulias also taught a political science course at Northwestern University, invested in a handful of restaurants and worked for about seven years as a wealth manager in the Chicago office of Bank of New York Mellon.
Giannoulias has declined to disclose the identities of his BNY Mellon clients, citing privacy provisions. He has only said his clients were “individuals and families” and that “none of my clients were elected officials.”
His campaign said Giannoulias never had any interaction “with any government entities or public pension funds at any time during his tenure at BNY.”
Brady is trying to become the first Republican secretary of state since White took over from George Ryan, who went on to become governor before going to prison for corruption that occurred during his time as secretary of state.
A funeral director and part-owner of a funeral home in Bloomington, Brady has been state representative since 2001 and was the McLean County coroner from 1992 to 2000.
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In announcing his endorsement of Brady last month, former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar — who preceded Ryan as secretary of state — said he believed that Brady has the best chance of any GOP candidate to win a race for statewide office.
In campaigning for the seat, Brady collected nearly $830,000 since announcing his bid last November, a fraction of the nearly $9 million his opponent amassed during the same period. During the primary, Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein backed one of Brady’s primary opponents, former prosecutor John Milhiser. Uihlein has since donated $6,000 to Brady’s campaign following the midterm election.
Among Brady’s largest financial backers is the Illinois Political Action Committee for Education, an arm of the Illinois Education Association, a statewide union representing current and former school faculty.
On the campaign trail, Giannoulias said his experience as Illinois treasurer and working with technology companies as a private-sector investor made him best suited to update the secretary of state’s office, which he described “as a customer service, retail operation.”
His proposed technology reforms include electronic vehicle titles, digital Real IDs and a “skip the line” program for driver’s license services that he said will do more to streamline the process for residents than the online scheduling that’s now available. The changes would speed up driver services and free workers to take more direct care of senior and disabled customers, Giannoulias said.
In an effort to grab voters’ attention, Giannoulias’ TV ads have ignored these nuts-and-bolts issues in favor of commercials promoting his support for abortion rights and voting rights — two issues central to the national Democratic platform that the secretary of state’s office has limited or no control over. He has vowed to work with state legislators to prevent automatic license plate reader footage from being used by anti-abortion states to prosecute women seeking abortion in Illinois.
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Brady has voted against pro-abortion rights measures in the legislature such as the 2019 Reproductive Health Act — enshrining abortion as a human right — and the repeal of a requirement for abortion providers to notify the parents of minors seeking the procedure. His candidacy was endorsed by the Illinois Federation for Right to Life.
He hasn’t focused on social issues like Giannoulias has, saying voters don’t seem to care about those issues when it comes to who would be able to provide the best services as secretary of state.
Instead, Brady talked about making driver’s license renewals more widely available through remote registration, and more mobile driver’s services at senior centers. He also touted his experience as a coroner and as a funeral director, saying it would be a plus given the secretary of state’s role in promoting organ donation.
As a legislator, Brady has developed a reputation for collaborating with colleagues across the aisle. He worked with a Democratic lawmaker and White on the state’s “first-person consent law,” which allows organ donors 18 and older to make their own decisions to donate their organs upon their deaths, preventing their families from overruling their wishes.
Brady also helped push for a 2018 law that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to join the registry, though if any of them were to die their parents would have the option of deciding whether their organs get harvested.
If elected, he promised to work with the General Assembly to try to reduce various licensing fees and transition the office to an electronic title and lien system. Among his proposals is a $50 reduction on all license plate fees for one year to address high inflation, which would have to be approved by state lawmakers.
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Brady pegged the loss in revenue from the temporary fee reduction to the state’s Road Fund and capital construction account at $435 million. Giannoulias criticized the plan as fiscally irresponsible, saying the cost would be more than $550 million.
