Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois has maintained his political organization, built a progressive record and is open about his ambitions. For now, he says, they don’t include the White House.
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The Democrats’ SOS Candidate Keeps His Options Open
Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois has maintained his political organization, built a progressive record and is open about his ambitions. For now, he says, they don’t include the White House.
March 3, 2023
The billionaire governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, says he will not challenge President Biden in 2024. Evan Jenkins for The New York Times
CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois sat comfortably in an office board room high above the Loop on Monday and halfheartedly batted away the notion that he was preparing a run for the White House.
The billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune may be seen by some Democrats as the “in case of emergency break glass” candidate, one of the few prominent politicians who could stand up a White House run at a moment’s notice. Although President Biden has said he intends to mount a campaign, that has not eased Democrats’ obvious worry: the famously dilatory Hamlet on the Potomac might decide not to run for re-election at 81, and worry could turn to panic.
But while Mr. Pritzker declined to provide a yea or nay on whether he would run, he added that a last-minute swap of an understudy for Mr. Biden was “such an odd hypothetical if you ask me.”
“I think it assumes a lot of things about someone who’s 80 in this world today. No kidding, you know, 80 is a lot different today than it was in the ’80s,” he said with his signature aw-shucks wave.
Politicians hate hypotheticals, or say they do to dodge questions, but if Mr. Biden cannot or will not run, the Democratic Party would have 3.6 billion reasons —
Forbes’s most recent estimate of Mr. Pritzker’s net worth — to turn to the Illinois governor.
“I intend to be impactful in the 2024 elections, helping Democrats run for Congress, helping Democrats run for United States Senate, and helping Joe Biden win re-election,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.Evan Jenkins for The New York Times
Four months after winning a
second term by 12.5 percentage points, Jay Robert Pritzker, 58, has maintained his political operation and his ambition. His influence and money reach far beyond state lines, and a string of progressive victories in the last year has raised his stature.
“He would run for two good reasons,” said Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Peoria who served as a transportation secretary in the Obama administration. “He’s a billionaire who’s not afraid to spend his own money, and he’s very progressive, which is where the Democratic Party is today.”
Indeed, Mr. Pritzker has turned center-left Illinois into an island of prairie progressivism, much as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who won re-election last year by 19 points, has enacted a blood-red “Florida Blueprint” that he is now pitching to the wider nation ahead of an expected campaign.
And while Mr. DeSantis has created a conservative bastion in Florida over the wishes of millions in his diverse state,
Mr. Pritzker’s policies have rankled much of Illinois beyond Chicagoland. Under his leadership, the legislature has approved a $15 minimum wage, legalized recreational cannabis, ended cash bail, guaranteed access to abortions and gender-affirming care and banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Patience and power
Late last month in the Lexington Elementary School gym in Maywood, a Chicago suburb, Mr. Pritzker unveiled his youth mental health initiative, then waited, sitting on a foldout metal chair, as each health policy expert, school official, state representative and state senator took their turn at the lectern. His security detail and black S.U.V. were at the ready behind the school, but he listened for over an hour with a wry smile on his face.
Patience, of course, is a virtue in politics, but don’t try to tell Mr. Pritzker there was a metaphor in his ability to wait out other Democrats. He has no interest in challenging Mr. Biden. Unity, he said, is the strongest weapon that Democrats will have to thwart a Donald J. Trump comeback or a contest against Mr. DeSantis, the two presumed front-runners for the G.O.P.
But should such a presidential race evolve, pitting Mr. Pritzker against Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis, it would be a clash of forceful avatars of modern conservatism and liberalism.
In the rural reaches of downstate Illinois, Mr. Pritzker’s shutdowns intended to slow the coronavirus pandemic have empowered the most ardent voices of the right, who point to crime and poverty in Chicago and the out-of-state relocations of
Boeing, Caterpillar and the
hedge-fund giant Citadel as his true legacy.