SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker looked for a little luck on the campaign trail from Illinois’ most revered politician.
“I just rubbed Lincoln’s nose,” Pritzker said in an interview with Capitol News Illinois after making a stop at the Springfield gravesite of the former president ahead of the second day of his statewide bus tour. “I can tell you I was praying for a 12th upgrade.”
The governor was referencing the state’s 11th credit upgrade since 2021, a decision announced by Moody’s on the first day of his weeklong bus tour. The Wall Street firm cited Pritzker’s “conservative” budgeting as one of the main reasons it has gained more confidence in Illinois.
Pritzker, a 61-year-old Chicago billionaire, is seeking a rare third term as governor and is running heavily on cost-of-living concerns and his fiscal record.
With nearly eight years under his belt, Pritzker embarked last week on his latest statewide bus tour since launching his first campaign in 2017. He crisscrossed the state over five days, meeting with union members in the Chicago area and downstate West Frankfort, shaking hands with political allies in Mt. Olive, taking pictures with college students in Urbana and holding rallies in Belleville and Rock Island.
Parts of the tour waded into territory his Republican opponent, Darren Bailey, is likely to win easily. But Pritzker said that’s part of the job.
Read more: Bailey implores Republicans to improve turnout as he plans to shift focus to Chicago
“I’m fighting for votes everywhere, and I stand up for the people of Illinois wherever they may live, and even if they’re Republicans or independents,” Pritzker said. “One of the things that I think Republicans have forgotten, and certainly Donald Trump has forgotten, is that yeah, you fight hard in an election to try to win, and you talk about the other side and how their policies don’t work and yours do, but once you win, your job is to work for everybody.”
Pritzker closed his speeches with a familiar rallying cry: “Are you ready for the fight?” — a phrase he’s deployed for nearly a decade. His theme song at the recent rallies was Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” and the tour bus declared: “JB Fighting For You.”
“The fight” has been the theme of Pritzker’s two terms, particularly over the last year as he’s gone head-to-head with President Donald Trump on cable TV, social media and even via video in Chicago streets during last year’s immigration crackdown. This week, he repeatedly chided Democrats who have stayed too quiet on the sidelines in his view as he declared he’s playing for “Team Fight” against Trump.
“I have to worry about whether people can eat the lettuce or blueberries off a grocery shelf because Trump is doing away with food inspections,” Pritzker said at a rally on Friday in Belleville. “I have to track measles outbreaks because the president put a madman in charge of vaccine recommendations. I have to monitor the movements of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents because he handed guns to people who couldn’t pass a background check to work in an animal shelter.”
The message was mostly heard by supporters on the meticulously planned tour. Pritzker received endorsements at some of the labor unions he visited, visited local Democratic offices, and made other stops that were largely invite-only while a video team trailed him filming positive interactions with voters. Customers were turned away at Lulu’s Diner in Springfield as the business displayed a sign showing it was closed for a private event where the governor shook hands with invited supporters.
Big issues
Supporters talked to Pritzker about a variety of issues at each stop. College students quizzed him on the big issues of the year while supporters at other events thanked him for his opposition to Trump.
Pritzker ran in 2018 on an agenda of pulling the state out of financial despair, raising the minimum wage and implementing other progressive policies. In 2022, expanding access to childcare was the theme of his second term, which brought some of Pritzker’s personal philanthropic goals to the forefront of state government.
This year, Pritzker is running on those achievements but telling voters there is more work to do to execute his “ambitious agenda” to “make things more affordable.”
“When you go through the list of things, we got a whole lot of those things done,” he said in the interview. “Meanwhile, there are so many things that we’re in process of accomplishing.”
Pritzker said he still wants to put more money into education, improve the state’s financial standing and achieve universal preschool across the state.
“In terms of the challenges that the state has, I wish that we could have gone at some of them more directly and faster,” Pritzker said. “I think we’ve done a great job, but I regret that there are some things that take longer than I would like to get through the legislature.”
Pritzker’s also not saying if a third term would be his last.
“I don’t know whether it’s my last term or not, but I certainly feel like the next four years are an opportunity to sort of cap off many of the things,” he said.
Students at an Urbana tavern stop hosted by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Illini Democrats were happy to hear lowering the cost of higher education was on his agenda.
“I want someone to defend and push policies that are going to make my life a lot easier so I can focus on my studies, so I can focus on events like this rather than working 20 hours, 40 hours a week to afford rent and groceries,” said Rylee Graves, a junior from Chicago who is an executive board member for the Illini Democrats and interns at the state Democratic Party.
At many stops along the tour, Pritzker repeatedly brought up immigration as supporters worried about Trump’s continued crackdown. The governor focused heavily on that topic with the college students, citing Marimar Martinez, a Chicago woman who was shot by ICE last year.
He said Martinez exhibited “bravery to stand up and do the right thing even at the risk perhaps of being attacked by people who disagreed with her.”
“All of us should be standing up and doing the right thing in this difficult moment,” he said.
“Him talking about that was very important and it really hit deep for me,” said Rami Khosho, a student from Chicago who came to America from Iraq as an infant and became a U.S. citizen as a child.
Forming relationships
Pritzker spent close to 30 minutes talking with the students after the event, taking pictures with nearly all of the roughly 50 students, who gave Pritzker, a father of two adult children their early 20s, solid grades on his remarks.
“I think he’s a really great speaker and I think he knew what his audience was when he brought up his talking points,” said River Daniel, a senior from Aurora.
Some of Pritzker’s skeptics say the governor can’t relate to people with his wealth. But he said in an interview that he thinks his governing record will overcome that perception.
“What I think people should know is that I’m fighting for working families, and I’ve proven that,” Pritzker said. “Darren Bailey has no record of fighting for working families. He’s gotten nothing done as an elected official.”
Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, said Pritzker approaches relationships like a friend and that’s what makes him easy to work with in government.
“He has been such a phenomenal partner in everything I have done even before I was in the Illinois State Senate; even while I was on the Springfield City Council, he was a tremendous partner of moving Springfield forward,” Turner told Capitol News Illinois.
Supporters agreed he can shake off the “rich guy” perception.
“I think I just go back to my looking into his life and his whole record prior to even entering politics and what he has invested his time and money and energy (into) and it’s been real people. I don’t see that billionaire game going on,” said Dianne Roberts, a Springfield resident who is active with the AFSCME labor union.
The presidential question
Pritzker’s campaign is drawing attention from outside Illinois as many pundits believe he is considering running for president in 2028.
“He seems just as great in person as the impression I’ve had from watching him on TV and online and I just think he’s been a really powerful voice this past year,” said Emily Waugh, an Oregon resident.
Waugh is part of the Women’s Walk Across America, a protest walk from Salem, Oregon, to Washington, D.C., in favor of women and LGBTQ rights. She attended Pritzker’s Springfield event while passing through Illinois’ capital city and said he comes off as a “fighter” who is “passionate and intelligent and does such a good job of articulating for us exactly what’s at stake in this moment.”
She also said she’d be interested in seeing Pritzker run for president.
“I might have a hard time if you were asking me to choose between him and (Texas Democrat James) Talarico maybe — there’s a few of them up there — but he’s absolutely on a shortlist for me,” Waugh said.
The first 2028 Democratic primary in South Carolina is less than 17 months away and candidates will likely start announcing themselves not long after November’s election.
“I don’t have a timeline for something like that,” Pritzker told Capitol News Illinois. “I mean, I will tell you, I’m running for re-election because I want to be the governor of the state of Illinois. I’m flattered, I really am, that people would even contemplate that I could be a candidate.”
Pritzker’s running mate, Christian Mitchell, is getting plenty of his own attention on the campaign trail. Mitchell, a former state representative from Chicago, was one of Pritzker’s deputy governors during his first term and handled some of the most significant portions of the governor’s agenda.
Pritzker said Mitchell has a bright future and selected him to replace Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is running for U.S. Senate, because of his prior experience in state government.
But at least publicly, Pritzker isn’t looking beyond this election.
“I’m looking forward to really serving as governor and don’t know what the future will hold after that,” Pritzker said.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.