Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is back in the news. Locked in a fight with President Trump over immigration enforcement in Chicago, Pritzker spent plenty of time on CNN this weekend egging on Democrats in their government shutdown fight and claiming the administration is already making violence and crime-riddled Chicago into a “war zone.”
Americans had better get used to it. Pritzker will not stop in his efforts to cement his status as the foil to President Trump—and conservatism, and really anything short of unabashed progressivism—to stop. He’s already crisscrossing the country, headlining Democratic events. It’s well past time for all of America to start taking a look at his record—and sooner rather than later.
In Illinois, Pritzker has spent more than $350 million to win two terms as governor– with almost all of that coming from his personal checking account. Forbes has ranked Pritzker as the richest politician in office in the entire U.S. He’s now leveraging his personal fortune to bolster his national profile.
At a recent Democrat dinner in New Hampshire, Pritzker “thunder[ed]” against “do-nothing Democrats,” openly called for “mass protests” and “disruption,” stating “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.” In speeches, interviews and on social media, Pritzker’s new favorite line is: “We don’t have kings in America, and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one” — an obvious nod to the riots and rallies that took place in June, and one that could even be read as having spurred them on.
During congressional testimony defending Illinois’ status as a sanctuary state, Pritzker dared the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest him: “I would rather he come and arrest me than do that to the people of my state,” Pritzker said.
Of course, this is all pretty standard for big-name Democrats these days; California Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t exactly been making nice with the Trump administration or congressional Republicans, and he and fellow California Democrats lined up with those opposing immigration enforcement instead of those attempting to enforce the law.
But there is a difference between Pritzker and Newsom, and it’s in their actual records in their own states. Both are bad, but Pritzker’s record is actually worse—and far less understood.
Illinoisans pay the single highest state and local taxes in the nation, according to WalletHub. With each year of Pritzker’s tenure, it gets worse.
According to the Illinois Policy Institute, Pritzker has enacted more than 50 tax increases since taking office in 2019, many of them affecting low and middle-income residents. This summer, the state’s second highest-in-the-nation gas tax is set to increase, again. The most recent state budget paves the way for higher property taxes, higher municipal grocery taxes, taxes on short-term rental properties like Airbnb and Vrbo, as well as new taxes on sports betting and businesses. Pritzker personally orchestrated the tax hammer dropped this year on nicotine pouches like Zyn and Rogue, per a Republican consultant and longtime tobacco harm reduction advocate who worked in opposition to it. Not only are taxes on nicotine-delivering products very regressive (and Pritzker purports to speak for the poor). In other blue states that have pursued those kinds of taxes, scientists who study tobacco harm reduction have plainly stated that driving prices up—especially while leaving taxes on traditional, combustible cigarettes alone—drives people to smoke.
Let’s be real: these aren’t the type of taxes that are going to hurt the Pritzker family budget. And if a Pritzker develops a chronic disease from choices that stem directly from pricing dictated by Pritzker taxes, they’ll have no problem paying all the best doctors and nurses to fix it. He can tax his way from here to oblivion and have the money to cover it. Not so for your average Illinoisan.
Of course, Pritzker will argue that all of these tax hikes were necessary. Baloney. The reasons for Illinois’ continuous tax increases are its rampant debt and overspending.
The state has more than $200 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, which puts the pension systems at approximately 50 percent funded. Someday, that bill will come due, and pension checks either will bounce, or taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for benefits they simply cannot afford. Pritzker has been unserious about fixing this problem.
In fact, Pritzker just signed a new state budget, and boasted about putting more money into the state’s “rainy day fund” as a sign of his fiscal prudence. But as the Cato Institute points out, Illinois has the smallest rainy day fund in America, at less than 5 percent of its annual spending. In an economic downturn, that’ll last all of five minutes.
It’s no wonder the Cato Institute frequently gives Pritzker the dismal grade of F on its Fiscal Policy Report Cards. Back to Newsom, the other 800-pound gorilla in the prospective 2028 Democratic presidential contest: hard as it is to believe, he actually has a slightly better record in those Cato Institute fiscal policy rankings.
Let’s be clear: Neither Pritzker nor Newsom deserves to win even a single swing state in 2028 with their respective records. Most average Americans would wonder how they’ve even won reelection in their states.
But before we get to 2026, when Pritzker will face re-election, and 2028, when Democratic presidential primaries will begin, it’s essential that rank-and-file voters start paying attention to these details. Contrary to what Democrats’ “end of democracy” narrative would suggest, actually—even in Illinois—democracy functions quite well when people have the facts and are presented with real choices. The GOP writ large has responsibility for ensuring the latter thing ahead of the next presidential election. Those of us in the media bear responsibility for the former, starting right now.
Diana Sroka Rickert, a writer based in Chicago, is a former vice president at the Illinois Policy Institute.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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