A year after his office was told of then-state Rep. Harry Benton's sexual harassment by a district office staffer, House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch assisted the now-disgraced former lawmaker's 2024 reelection campaign with $1.4 million to prevent Benton from actively working to curb organized labor support to the speaker's war chest, the Tribune has learned.
Welch, his leadership embattled over his handling of Benton's conduct, told members of the House Democratic Women's Caucus in a virtual meeting last month of his concerns that the former Plainfield lawmaker, a union ironworker, had been bashing the speaker to labor, a powerful and wealthy Democratic ally, sources who attended the meeting told the Tribune.
But some Democrats close to labor privately scoffed at Welch's explanation, saying Benton had little power to influence organized labor or its massive fundraising apparatus.
Separately, Benton reported he was paid at least $8,700 by the Disparti Law Group to recruit labor clients for the personal injury and workers' compensation firm, according to his required statement of economic interest, filed in April. Personal injury attorneys are also a significant source of campaign cash for Democrats, including the funds Welch controls.
The revelations raise new questions about whether Welch prioritized his own political interests to maintain his speakership over the interests of a young female Benton staffer, who says she was forced to quit her job out of fear for her mental health after Benton's sexual harassment went unpunished by the speaker's office.
It wasn't until three years later, when Welch's office was told of Benton's harassment of a lobbyist in January of this year, that the speaker stepped in, removing the lawmaker from the House Democratic caucus and his committee assignments and filing a report in March with the legislative inspector general's office.
Legislative Inspector General Michael McCuskey found Benton's sexual harassment violated state law and that he had also harassed a staffer of another legislator in 2025. Benton resigned from the legislature July 3 and withdrew from seeking reelection.
In the virtual meeting with the Women's Caucus on July 21, Welch was asked why he gave Benton's 2024 reelection campaign $1.4 million despite knowing about the former Benton staffer's sexual harassment complaints. According to sources who attended, Welch said he gave Benton the campaign cash to counter the lawmaker's complaints to labor that the speaker wasn't doing enough for his campaign. After Benton's reelection, Welch said, Benton still complained to labor that the speaker should have done more.
State campaign finance records show Welch in recent years received more than $200,000 from various political action committees associated with the Ironworkers — a not insubstantial sum, but only a small share of the money organized labor has given the speaker to fund individual legislative campaigns.
In the meeting with the Women's Caucus, Welch also said he didn't take the former Benton staffer's initial complaint seriously "because he gets a lot of complaints against members," according to one attendee's notes. Welch said he waited for "due process" and said the sexual harassment issue became a "he said, she said" between Benton and the staffer, so Welch's office didn't pursue it further.
The latest revelations about Welch come as the speaker on Wednesday made the rounds of several media outlets in an effort to shore up support for his leadership amid increasing scrutiny. Unlike the Tribune, none of the outlets Welch spoke with had interviewed the harassment victims, leaving Welch to present a largely one-sided account.
Welch's media outreach did not include the Tribune, which on July 17 published a months-long investigation that found the speaker's office had known of Benton's harassment of a district office staffer for three years but failed to act until this year — a period in which two other women faced Benton's harassment. Even before publication, the Tribune had unsuccessfully sought to interview Welch about his handling of the case, including whether he ever confronted Benton after his staffer brought a lengthy list of allegations, many of a sexual nature, to his office.
The Tribune has contacted Welch's office repeatedly in the weeks since the investigation was published, seeking an interview or information about when the speaker would be publicly available to take questions. That included Tuesday, when, in the afternoon, a spokeswoman for Welch did not make him available, saying, "The Speaker has been traveling with family to see his son's baseball team win a spot in the Little League World Series." But that didn't stop him from taping interviews on Wednesday with various Chicago television newscasts from his downtown Chicago state office while ignoring follow-up requests from the Tribune.
In an interview with WGN-TV, Welch was asked why he didn't do more when he first learned of the former Benton staffer's allegations.
"I take full responsibility for that. We could do better. We will do better," he said, before contending there were "systemic failures" and blaming the staffer for not filing a formal complaint with the legislative inspector general's office.
"That formal complaint could have helped bring about a different situation, but we had to respect the wishes of the survivor," Welch told WGN-TV. In another interview, Welch referred to the former staffer's allegations as an "unofficial complaint."
But the former staffer followed the protocols outlined in a document she was given, which listed the speaker's chief of staff as a reportable entity for sexual harassment complaints. It was Welch's then-chief of staff who received the former staffer's lengthy list of allegations against Benton.
The former staffer twice rejected the speaker's office's efforts to have her contact the legislative inspector general, fearing that, as a young staffer, she would become a political pariah and forfeit future opportunities to work in government and politics. Instead, she said she believed Welch's office could handle her complaint internally. Still, she said she wanted action taken so no other women would be subjected to Benton's harassment in the future.
Welch said during the WGN-TV interview it was "very possible" the two women subsequently harassed by Benton wouldn't have become victims if he had done more as a result of the 2023 complaint. But he said "there clearly were some systemic failures," adding that the House was in the process of developing a centralized human relations office and a working group of lawmakers to discuss the handling of Benton's conduct. Welch also said an outside investigator had been retained.
Democratic state Rep. Kelly Cassidy of Chicago, an outspoken critic of Welch's handling of the Benton case, was angry that the speaker's office had listed her as part of the legislative working group without answering her questions on whether it "would offer more than lip service or a PR stunt."
"My name was leaked as part of this process without my agreement. I'm disappointed, as I believe a working group on this topic could be necessary and important. But we have a responsibility to victims and survivors to ensure any such body is credible and effective, and I currently do not have confidence it will be. As such, I will not be participating at this time," she said in a statement.
In the WGN-TV interview, Welch said the decision to invest in Benton's 2024 reelection stemmed from "the fact that there was no formal complaint filed and (Benton) was entitled to a constitutional right to due process."
"I had to support a member and I supported a member. Do I regret that? Certainly," he said. "But at that time, with the information available to us, I had to support a member and labor was a big advocate of Representative Benton."
Welch also offered an apology to the former staffer for his conduct in using "heart-eye" social media emojis to react to images of her on her Instagram posts, something she told the Tribune made her "uncomfortable."
"I would say the first time that I learned that I made her feel uncomfortable was when I read it in the Chicago Tribune, and I felt terrible. I really did, and honestly, I'm going to own that. I regret it, and I want to apologize to her. I sincerely want to apologize to her because it was never my intent to make her or anyone feel uncomfortable," Welch said.
"I certainly have learned a lot from this situation, certainly have changed already my social media behavior, because I don't want to make another person feel uncomfortable, as I did in this situation, and I'm going to own that," he said.
As for Benton, the statement of economic interest that he filed in April of this year, over a month after Welch removed him from caucus duties, listed Disparti Law Group as an additional "source of any income in excess of $8,700 required to be reported during the preceding calendar year."
Jason Baumann, director of communications for the law group, said Benton performed work there for a time as an independent contractor, serving as a liaison between the firm and unions because of his ironworker background and connections to organized labor.
"The intention was to have him raise awareness for the services of Disparti Law amongst union members," Baumann said. He declined to say how much Benton was paid and didn't know how long he worked for the firm but guessed he started about a year and a half ago. Baumann said Benton is "no longer associated with us" and said he believes he stopped doing work for the firm "pretty recently."
According to Illinois State Board of Elections records, the law group contributed $15,000 to Benton's campaign in 2024 before his reelection that November. Since 2021, the year Welch was named speaker, the law group has contributed $90,000 to Welch-controlled campaign funds — mostly to his personal campaign fund.