Last week, the National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMSP) identified Illinois lawmakers as having received more campaign contributions from the predatory lenders than in any other state. Their research found that the payday and title loan industry had poured over $2.5 million into Illinois campaign coffers between 1999 and 2006 -- almost twice as much as Florida, the second highest recipient state.

This should come as no surprise. While Illinois passed a law aimed at curbing predatory lending in 2005, it included a crucial loophole. In his feature article on this topic, Mose explained how the state has since become a "dumping ground" for payday loan stores:

After they realized they could exploit this loophole, payday lenders were back in business and Illinois reformers were out of luck. And there were more clouds on the horizon. As other states started cracking down on predatory lending (many simply capping interest rates at 36 percent) more and more payday loan operations began popping up in Illinois.

"We've become the dumping ground," says [Citizen/Action co-director Lynda] DeLaforgue. "It's just the wild wild west. Whatever goes, goes." As of 2005, there were more payday loan storefronts in Illinois than McDonald's franchises.

As the NIMSP report noted, Gov. Rod Blagojevich is the largest recipient of contributions from predatory lenders, accepting over $450,000 from the industry during the previous four election cycles. However, there are numerous other Illinois politicians from both sides of the aisle that have taken the payday lenders' money as well. With NIMSP's assistance, we've compiled a list of the top 20 recipients in Illinois during this time period:

Over these four election cycles, 68 percent of predatory lending contributions went to Illinois Democrats, while 32 percent flowed to Republicans. For more information on which specific companies are sending the most money to Illinois candidates, check out this release (PDF) from the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.