the total amount lost until the settlement was announced. “He purposely misled the public and Bright Start victims about the size of the loss and how much he would recover,” Hoffman said in a press release. At a December candidates’ forum at the Union League Club of Chicago, Hoffman also questioned whether Bright Start was even one of the nation’s best.

E-mails from Giannoulias to Oppenheimer reveal Giannoulias did try to work with Oppenheimer to “turn the ship around” after learning of the problem. Greg Brown, a mutual fund analyst at investment research company Morningstar, Inc., says Oppenheimer is under fire in several other states for misleading investors about its risky investment leverage, pointing out that Giannoulias was the first state official to recognize a problem and attempt to fix it. “To Illinois and Alexi’s credit, they were the first to sound the alarm,” Brown says. “They met quickly with Oppenheimer and asked what on earth was going on. In my opinion, they reacted as quickly as they could.”

Giannoulias points out that the fund in question was only one of many funds included in Bright Start, and that only 3 percent of the program’s estimated $2 billion value was invested in the troubled Core Plus fund.

“Oppenheimer made some investments that were impermissible,” he says. “There was nothing structurally wrong with Bright Start. David Hoffman likes to say people lost 50 percent of their money, but that’s not true. At worst, if you had all your money in Core Plus, which is 3 percent of the people, you lost 38 percent. But with the settlement, you get half that money back, so you only lose maximum, with the market rebounding, about 15.5 percent. To make it seem like people lost 50 percent of their money is horribly inaccurate.”

Even so, the fact remains that some Illinois families lost money on his watch, and his opponents aren’t likely to let him forget it. As Giannoulias releases documents from the Oppenheimer settlement, he will likely face more tough criticism.

“It’s troubling,” Jackson said at the Union League forum in December. “It does speak to the people, the families, that need protection the most, that are the most vulnerable…that their money wasn’t better protected.”

There’s also the Bright Start hybrid vehicle fiasco, in which Giannoulias used fees paid by Oppenheimer to purchase a hybrid SUV that is used to promote the program. He has come under fire for purchasing the vehicle at the same time the Bright Start program was experiencing such heavy losses. Giannoulias defends the purchase, however, saying it was not paid for with taxpayer funds or with proceeds from the program, and it is not driven for personal use.

Another issue that has dogged Giannoulias relates to the family bank, where he served as a vice president in charge of loans from 2002 to 2006. Broadway Bank made loans to unsavory borrowers before and during Giannoulias’ time there, and his opponents and the media have questioned his involvement.

One such loan went to Michael “Jaws” Giorango, a convicted bookkeeper and pimp who borrowed money from Broadway Bank for a fleet of gambling boats in Florida.