There’s a clear financial leader in the two-way race for the Democratic nomination for Urbana mayor.

DeShawn Williams, Champaign County’s chief deputy treasurer, has raised nearly $20,000 in his campaign for the Democratic nomination in the Feb. 25 primary. Annie Adams has raised $6,120.

Incumbent Mayor Diane Marlin is not running for re-election after serving two terms. Marlin is supporting Adams in the primary.

No Republican has filed to run for mayor. The last Republican mayor of Urbana was the late Jeff Markland, who served from 1977 to 1993.

Some $16,830 of Williams’ $19,258 in campaign contributions is itemized, including $3,800 from Champaign County Treasurer Cassandra Johnson, his biggest donor.

He has also received $1,750 from Laborers International 703 in Urbana; $1,500 each from Iron Workers 380 in Urbana and Plumbers and Pipefitters 149 in Savoy; $1,000 from the East Central Illinois Building and Trades Council; and $510 from the Painters and Allied Trades International Union in Maryland.

Other donors to Williams’ campaign include some top officeholders in Champaign: School board member Amy Armstrong and police Chief Timothy Tyler each gave his campaign $250. Champaign County Executive Steve Summers gave $200 and county board member Jen Straub gave $500.

Champaign Mayor Deb Feinen has endorsed Williams, as has U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield.

Feinen said she has “been meeting on and off (with Williams) for about two years. He reached out to me when he decided to run for mayor.”

Said Budzinski: “DeShawn’s commitment to continuing to strengthen the city’s economy and addressing the root causes of our community’s challenges are some of the reasons I am proud to endorse his candidacy for mayor of Urbana.”

Adams, who entered the race in late September, about nine months after Williams, got $1,000 from Marlin’s campaign fund and smaller amounts from a number of Urbana residents.

The million dollar-plus Illinois House race

How much is a state representative seat worth in Illinois?

If the 104th Illinois House District race last year in Champaign and Vermilion counties is any indication, it’s worth between a half-million and more than a million dollars to the two political parties.

State Rep. Brandun Schweizer, R-Danville, had $562,678 spent on his behalf in his narrow, 269-vote win over Democrat Jarrett Clem of rural St. Joseph in November. Schweizer’s own campaign fund accounted for almost $102,000 of all that spending. But the bigger bucks came from the House Republican Organization and the Illinois Republican Party, which spent about $460,000 on his behalf, mostly for campaign staff, polling and advertising.

Clem’s campaign spent $466,442 — just in calendar year 2024 — and had another $444,284.15 spent on his behalf by groups like the Illinois AFL-CIO, the pro-choice Personal PAC, the Democratic Party of Illinois and the Democrats for the Illinois House. All told, some $1.14 million was spent on Clem’s unsuccessful campaign last year.

That means that a stunning $48.90 was spent for each of the 23,273 votes that Clem received in Vermilion and Champaign counties. Meanwhile, Schweizer’s campaign and the Republican Party spent about $23.89 for each of the 23,546 votes he got.

Altogether, more than $1.7 million was spent — much of it on forgettable mail pieces and digital and TV advertising — for a relatively meaningless seat, one of 118 in the House. If Clem had won, he’d be one of 79 Democrats, a tiny, quiet cog in a big, clanging machine. With Schweizer’s win, he is the 40th Republican vote, a group big enough to make some noise but too small to get anything done against the dominating Democrats.

More about William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial

Reader Tim Smith of Danville wrote in response to last weekend’s column that John T. Scopes, the defendant in William Jennings Bryan’s last trial, had attended Danville High School.

Indeed, a 2021 paper by Jonathan K. Van Patten in the South Dakota Law Review noted that Scopes’ family moved to Danville when John was around 13 years old. They stayed for two years before moving to Salem, which coincidentally was the birthplace of Bryan.

Another Illinois coincidence: Scopes briefly attended the University of Illinois. In the spring of 1920, he became ill in the science lab and was rushed to the hospital. He recovered but decided to transfer to the University of Kentucky to be in a warmer climate, wrote Van Patten.

Tom Kacich’s column appears weekends in The News-Gazette. He can be reached at .