Running for reelection in Illinois’ 17th Congressional district, Cheri Bustos spent almost $3.2 million in the 2017-2018 election cycle. The expenditures ranged from dinners at Chicago and Washington DC’s most expensive restaurants, such as the 116 Club, to office supplies at Walmart.  Bustos’s top expenditures include payments towards communications, advertising and financial specialists, donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and paychecks for staffers.

During the 2017-2018 election cycle, Republican U.S. Congressman Rodney Davis's campaign spent $4,085,715. Dr. Kent Redfield, a retired professor of Political Science who specialized in campaign finance at the University of Illinois Springfield said Davis increased his campaign spending because he was feeling pressure in his campaign.

Danny K. Davis, the 7th Congressional District Democrat, spent less on his 2018 campaign than any other Illinois Democrat - just $551,000. Davis has been in office since 1996. Every year, he runs virtually unopposed, always racking up at least 80% of the vote. In 2018, he pulled in 87.6% of the vote against his opponent, Illinois Republican Craig Cameron. In the 2016 election, he captured 84.2% of the vote after spending $503,000.

Illinois Congressman Darin LaHood spent $1.2 million to get re-elected in 2018, half of what he spent in the previous election cycle. LaHood, Republican Congressman for Illinois’ 18th District, spent over $2.2 million for his 2016 special election campaign, when he ran for the seat of Aaron Schock, who resigned after being charged with campaign fraud.

Lauren Underwood spent about $4.9 million to win her seat in the election for Illinois’s 14th congressional district. Most of Underwood’s expenditures from 2017-2018 were on TV advertising and payroll processing. Underwood’s campaign spent $2,498,871 million on TV Advertising alone, according the FEC. The payments were to the company “Ethica” in Garden City, NY.

In his first campaign year in the election cycle, Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García of Illinois’s 4th congressional district spent nearly $1 million after winning against Mark Wayne Lorch of the Republican Party with more than 86% of the votes. García was elected to Congress in November 2018 and sworn into office on Jan. 3 of this year. He is one of only three congressmen who are newly elected. The 15 other Illinois congressmen were re-elected for this term.

Despite being unopposed in the Republican primary and winning reelection to his seat by 41 percentage points over Democratic challenger Kevin Gaither, U.S. Rep. John Shimkus still spent $1.8 million during the 2018 election season. Shimkus spent the most money on Gula Graham Group. The Washington, D.C.-based fundraising firm received $500,519 from Volunteers for Shimkus during the 2018 campaign. Another fundraising company, The Voyageur Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, received $57,000.

Democrat Sean Casten spent $6.7 million in the 2018 congressional election to become the representative for Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, a Chicago west-suburb district…

Davis’s campaign spent about nearly $4.1 million in the 2018 election cycle. In the 2016 cycle, he spent $2.4 million. The organization that received the most of Davis’ money was Strategic Media Services. This company specializes in advertising for political candidates. Davis paid Strategic Media Services a total of $1.9 million in the 2018 election cycle.

Democratic congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois’s fifth congressional district spent over $1.2 million to win re-election in his 2018 House race against Republican challenger…