Lake County Gazette

Illinois gubernatorial hopeful Joe Severino (R) reported his first major campaign donation of $50,000 from billionaire investor Stewart R. Horejsi, according to an Oct. 17 filing with the Illinois State Board of Elections. 

Horejsi is an 88-year-old Kansas native worth an estimated $3 billion. He built his fortune by investing in Berkshire Hathaway stock that he began buying in 1980 for about $265 a share—now valued at more than $520,000 each.

Over the past decade, Horejsi, who splits his time between Arizona, Oregon and Barbados, has cultivated a reputation as both a philanthropist and an eccentric financier. Through his Horejsi Charitable Foundation, he’s funneled tens of millions into causes ranging from the Mayo Clinic’s Phoenix expansion to the University of Kansas athletics programs.

He has a track record of providing campaign donations to Republicans, including in Illinois.

Severino has launched social media attacks on rival Republicans, including DuPage County Sheriff Jim Mendrick. 

Mendrick accused Severino of attempting to solicit a digital marketer to create an artificial intelligence video slandering him.

“My political stalker, Joe Severino, has sunk to the lowest level of depravity,” Mendrick said in a Facebook post. “He actually tried to hire a company to make fake AI videos of me. He wanted the fake videos to be made depicting me doing meth amphetamine with 14 year old girls. This man is sick. He’s doing the same thing to a dozen other republicans.” 

Severino has also faced multiple orders of protection from Mendrick, Downers Grove GOP precinct committeeman Terry Newsome and is currently being sued for defamation by Lake Forest Podcast host Pete Jansons.

In 2024, he ran an unsuccessful independent write-in campaign for Illinois' 10th Congressional District, securing just 238 votes compared to Democrat Rep. Brad Schneider’s 196,358 and Republican Jim Carris’s 131,025.

 In that race, Severino failed to gather enough signatures to qualify as a Republican candidate, then tried unsuccessfully to run as a Democrat before ultimately running as a write-in.

In 2022, the Federal Election Commission filed a complaint against Severino over his failure to submit required congressional campaign filings. In the 2024 campaign cycle Severino also failed to submit the necessary filings, once again falling behind on his federal election paperwork. 

In 2020, Horejsi contributed $5,600 to Ted Gradel’s 2019 congressional campaign. The donation, recorded on Sept. 26, 2019, placed Horejsi among the top individual contributors to Gradel’s effort to win Illinois’ 14th Congressional District seat.

Gradel, a former Notre Dame football player and businessman, ran for Illinois’ 14th Congressional District in 2020, finishing fourth in the GOP primary with 13.4% of the vote. 

Severino is running against declared candidates, Mendrick, Wirepoints.com publisher Ted Dabrowski of Wilmette and former State Senator Darren Bailey of Xenia, in downstate Clay County.

Rick Heidner of Barrington Hills, a real estate and video gambling entrepreneur, has also expressed interest in the race.