Jack Roeser

Roeser was the chairman and founder of Otto Engineering Inc. in Carpentersville. Wearing his trademark bolo tie, Roeser was ever visible at tea party and conservative events he helped sponsor, believing the tide had turned after decades in which he and other conservatives felt shut out by the moderate leaders who ran Illinois’ Republican Party. While Roeser never disavowed any comments he had made, his own rhetoric also helped to cast him as an outsider—except to those candidates who wanted his campaign cash. Most every candidate he backed in major politics went down in defeat—including his own ill-fated bid against Gov. Jim Edgar in 1994. Since 1997, state campaign finance records showed Roeser poured more than $4.6 million into Republican candidates and causes, including his own political action committees, the Family Taxpayers Network and, later, the Republican Renaissance PAC. Records show Roeser donated more than $15,000 to the Republican governor campaign of Bruce Rauner, who also is strenuously opposed to the power of teacher’s unions.