By Illinois Review
Ted Dabrowski has built his gubernatorial campaign around a simple promise: fiscal discipline. He has marketed himself as the numbers guy. The watchdog. The conservative who will rein in waste and stop the insider games in Springfield.
But newly filed campaign finance disclosures raise serious questions about whether that message matches reality.
From October through December, Dabrowski’s campaign spent approximately $181,000 on consultants and staff in just three months. A significant portion of that total – $75,000 – went to Florida-based Chicago radio host Dan Proft for “political consulting.”
The payments were routed through Proft’s Naples-based firm, Starfish Consulting, at a rate of $25,000 per month.
That spending has drawn fresh scrutiny, not just because of the amount, but because of Proft’s long and controversial track record in Illinois politics.
Proft is best known for running a network of political action committees that have raised staggering sums of money while producing few – if any – electoral victories. Since 2012, Proft-linked PACs have taken in nearly $60 million.
Despite that massive haul, the record shows zero statewide wins to point to. The pattern extends beyond Dabrowski’s campaign.
During the 2022 Illinois governor’s race, Proft’s PAC paid Starfish Consulting roughly $535,000 for “general election services” between July and December. The Republican ticket lost.
In the April 2023 school board elections, Proft’s PAC reported spending about $142,000 on political consultants, while directing only $3,700 in direct support to actual school board candidates. During that same period, $75,000 again went to Proft’s own consulting firm.
That imbalance – consultants paid generously while candidates receive scraps—has become a defining feature of Proft’s political operation.
Now, Dabrowski’s campaign appears to be following the same playbook.
The irony is hard to miss. Dabrowski has repeatedly criticized career politicians and insider spending. He has argued Illinois taxpayers deserve leaders who respect money and demand results. Yet his campaign is pouring tens of thousands of dollars into consultants with a well-documented history of losing races.
For conservative voters, this raises an uncomfortable question: if Dabrowski cannot control spending inside his own campaign, how would he manage a state budget measured in tens of billions?
Illinois Republicans are hungry for a winner. They want results, not recycled consultants and failed strategies. Paying $25,000 a month to a Florida-based political operator with no recent victories does not look like reform. It looks like business as usual.
And the results speak for themselves. Recent polling shows Dabrowski trailing the Republican gubernatorial frontrunner by 26 points, despite months of heavy consultant spending and lofty rhetoric about fiscal discipline.
At a time when families are squeezed by inflation, crime is rising, and Democrats continue to push radical social policies that undermine children and families, Republicans cannot afford to waste donor money on political consultants who enrich themselves while losing elections.
Fiscal conservatism starts at home. For Ted Dabrowski, the numbers are now speaking louder than the slogans.
