Stay informed with Shaw Local's Election Central. Research your ballot, where the candidates stand on the issues and set yourself up with a reminder to vote.

CHICAGO – A labor union that endorsed Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s re-election campaign in Illinois has donated money to an unlikely source – the Libertarian candidate running against him.

The move by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 is an apparent attempt to siphon away votes from Republican Bruce Rauner in the tight race.

The group paid for glossy household mailers that describe Libertarian Chad Grimm as “the only true conservative choice for governor,” noting his opposition to abortion and his support of gun rights. The same mailings describe Rauner as a “Chicago liberal.”

While officials from the 23,000-member union acknowledge that a majority of their membership supports Quinn, they say they are “committed to offering a viable choice for members who do not support Democrats.”

Rauner, a Winnetka businessman who made fighting “government union bosses” a focus of his primary campaign, isn’t it, they say.

“Nearly half of our members in Illinois pull Republican ballots in a typical primary election, so it is important that these members have the opportunity to back a candidate that will not attack their livelihood,” spokesman Ed Maher wrote in a statement last week to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Maher, who declined comment to The Associated Press for this story, said in the statement that the stakes in the election were “too high” for any member to sit out.

In addition to the $200,000 donation from the operating engineers to a political action committee to pay for ads and mailers, Grimm, a fiscal conservative who believes in minimal government, received a direct $30,000 boost from the union earlier this month. A review of campaign finance records shows that the operating engineers also donated more than $45,000 since June to a ballot access initiative helping the Libertarians defend against Republicans’ legal attempts to have their candidates thrown off the ballot.

The 33-year-old Peoria gym manager, whose campaign war chest stood at a mere $100 on Sept. 30, said he has no qualms about accepting help from a union that has formally endorsed Quinn.

“I’m not going to turn it down,” Grimm said. “I can’t possibly get behind everybody’s motivations for wanting to help out.”

But Rauner’s spokesman, Mike Schrimpf, sought to paint Grimm’s views as extreme while downplaying the legitimacy of his candidacy.

“Illinoisans ... understand that a vote for Grimm is the same as voting for Pat Quinn,” Schrimpf said.

The operating engineers’ overt support of Grimm comes as s coalition of other Illinois labor unions has also spent millions of dollars working to defeat Rauner in the primary and general election.

In 2010, more than 34,000 voters cast ballots for a Libertarian candidate for governor. Quinn’s less than 1 percentage point margin of victory over Republican Bill Brady closely mirrored the percentage of Libertarian votes in the race.

Grimm, the only third party candidate in the race this year, has said his realistic goal is neither to win the governor’s race, nor be a spoiler. Instead, he hopes to build support for the Libertarians and ensure the party will be officially recognized in the next election by getting at least 5 percent of the vote statewide.

He says the union money will help him to distribute mailers to voters, pay for campaign website upgrades and possibly a radio ad.

As for unions, Grimm says he has no problem with private sector unions, but he “isn’t fond of public sector unions as the people who write their checks (the taxpayers) are not there to negotiate.”