Taking their most direct shots yet in Illinois’ gubernatorial election rematch, incumbent Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker went head-to-head with Republican nominee Darren Bailey Tuesday night in the only televised debate scheduled before the polls close next month.
The billionaire two-term governor squared off with the downstate farmer and former legislator in a WTTW News forum that saw the pair frequently talking over each other while weathering attacks familiar from their first electoral go-round four years ago, when Pritzker beat Bailey by nearly 13 percentage points.
It marked Bailey’s latest appeal to win over Chicago area voters who soundly rejected him in a 2022 election season largely defined by his branding of the city as a “hellhole” during a televised primary debate.
“Sir, you’re wasting our children’s future, and it’s obvious,” Bailey told Pritzker while responding to a question about education funding. “Everyone is hurting.”
This time around, Bailey has tried to pin cost-of-living increases on Pritzker, who blames President Donald Trump for most of those affordability concerns — and is keen to remind voters that Bailey is a longtime Trump supporter.
“He’s sat silently while Donald Trump has taken these things away from people in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said during a retort on Trump administration cuts to Medicaid and SNAP funding. “I think people deserve health care. I’ve been fighting for universal health care.”
Here are some key takeaways from an often chippy Pritzker-Bailey forum.
Trump? ‘Take a drink’
Anticipating a healthy dose of Pritzker attacks centering on Bailey’s allegiance to Trump, the former state representative and senator from southern Illinois advised viewers at the outset “to fill up your glass of water, your iced tea, your lemonade, and every time that he mentions Trump, let’s take a drink.”
“It’s time for Gov. Pritzker to own the failures and the problems of Illinois, because theoretically, [with] eight years in the supermajority, we shouldn’t be dealing with these issues,” Bailey said in regard to federal funding cuts affecting rural health care centers.
Bailey kept up the shtick for most of the hourlong forum, chiming in to “drink up” several more times as Pritzker connected his challenger to Trump policies.
“Let’s do something about the high cost of diesel in this country because of Trump’s Iran war, because of Trump’s trade orders,” Pritzker said over a pair of Bailey interjections in response to a question about helping Illinois farmers. “And let me be clear, Darren Bailey has cheered that on the entire time.”
‘He loves Indiana’
As Bailey highlighted the relatively stronger financial position of Indiana’s state pension system in contrast to Illinois’, Pritzker suggested his opponent’s loyalties lie east of the border.
“He always talks about how great Indiana is. It seems like he loves Indiana more than he loves Illinois,” Pritzker said. “In my view, we’ve got to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to balance the budget in order to pay for the things that we really care about.”
“There’s a lot of people who love Indiana… they’re moving out of here,” Bailey countered.
“It’s sad, that’s what you believe,” Pritzker responded.
Bears stadium debate
The Hoosier barbs resurfaced later in the forum when the candidates were asked how far they’re willing to go to keep the Chicago Bears from moving to Indiana.
“A billionaire family owning a $9 billion valued team does not need us to buy them or build them a stadium,” Pritzker said. He reiterated he’s still supportive of providing state support for infrastructure costs, as is the case for many businesses — and bullish on lawmakers passing a bill during the veto session next month to help keep them here.
“I believe that in November, we’re going to be able to get something done to keep the Bears in the state of Illinois. But I’m not going to do it at the expense of the taxpayers,” Pritzker said, drawing a scoff from Bailey.
“I’m just glad I’m not going to be known as the governor that lost the Bears. You want to know why he’s going to wait till November? Because the Bears are going to Indiana,” Bailey said.
“It’s like you’re wishing for it,” Pritzker interjected.
“It’s already done. [Indiana Gov. Mike] Braun’s assured me of that,” Bailey said before describing his pitch to keep the Bears, which relies on payments in lieu of taxes, a concept that Pritzker has supported.
“It’s a starting point,” Bailey said. “JB Pritzker doesn’t have to go buy his own cars like I do… You bargain for a car. You know what it’s like, he doesn’t. You hear the price and then you negotiate. We’ve got to start somewhere, but unfortunately, that’s not taking place in Illinois.”
SAFE-T Act
Bailey leveled familiar attacks against Pritzker over the SAFE-T Act and corresponding criminal justice legislation he signed that eliminated cash bail in Illinois.
“We need to repeal it, and I think we need to come back to the table. At that table, we’ll have law enforcement, and we’ll have the state’s attorneys available because you want to know something? They were not available when they had negotiated it [in Springfield] in the dark of night,” Bailey said.
“Darren Bailey’s answer to this is to go back to a system where the most violent criminals can buy their way out of jail,” Pritzker responded. “I don’t think they should be able to. I think judges and prosecutors ought to decide whether or not someone should be let out in the community or not.”
Bailey interjected to ask Pritzker directly about a pair of Illinois tragedies that critics argue could have been prevented if the city had cooperated with federal immigration authorities.
“Have you even said Sheridan Gorman’s name yet? Sheridan Gorman. Katie Abraham. Can you say that?... Lives are at stake.”
Prosecutors say Gorman was killed by a man from Venezuela who was in the U.S. without documentation. Abraham died in a hit-and-run crash that authorities have blamed on a Guatemalan man without legal status.
“Darren Bailey likes to exploit people’s pain for political gain,” Pritzker countered. “That is why he mentions these things… I’ve been fighting violent crime and making sure we have more state police.”
Data centers
Bailey took shots at Pritzker for “bringing all these data centers in, free rein, give them tax breaks, let them have their thing, and now all of a sudden we’ve seen our energy prices spike.”
Pritzker, who has paused state tax incentives for data center construction, said, “We should have no more data centers, unless they bring their own clean energy, bring their own closed-loop water systems, and let local governments and people living locally to decide whether or not they want a data center in their local communities.”
No sore feelings — except for excluded independent candidate
Pritzker and Bailey could be seen shaking hands and sharing some brief words as the credits rolled on their TV tussle.
But left out of the conversation was independent candidate Collin Corbett, who slammed his exclusion from the forum by WTTW based on poll numbers.
“With such a weak candidate in Darren Bailey sitting across from JB Pritzker in tonight’s forum, there was no one there to hold him accountable for his failures and lies,” Corbett said in a statement.
“The truth: Illinois is significantly less affordable for working families today than it was when JB Pritzker took office. Our property taxes are the highest in the country, while our health care, energy, gas, and housing prices are skyrocketing,” Corbett said. “And all JB Pritzker does is blame Washington, while there are things we could do right now that could lower the cost of living for Illinoisans.”
