By admin 
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on first look may not have the ideal biography among potential presidential contenders for some parts of the Democratic Party.
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He’s worth $4.2 billion, is part of the Pritzker family and an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune. He also self-funded his first bid for Illinois governor. Parts of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party often takes aims at income inequality in the country as an issue that needs to be addressed.
However, Pritzker is someone who has progressive accomplishments to point to, including signing bills to raise the Illinois minimum wage to $15 an hour, legalize recreational marijuana use, and a bill to strengthen access to abortion care in the Land of Lincoln.
It’s a resume that may make progressives happy.
“I’ve been very proud of making sure that we’re on all fronts standing up for people’s freedoms, and making sure that working families get a more affordable life and more money in their pockets, and so those are all things that are about standing up for the working class,” Pritzker said in a phone interview from Chicago ahead of his weekend trip to South Carolina.
He’s running for a third term as Illinois governor this year, and is favored to win the Nov. 3 election. But in recent months Pritzker made a trip to New Mexico, which will hold the fourth Democratic presidential nominating contest in 2028. He made a trip to New Hampshire in 2025, which will hold the third nominating contest.
He points out that he’s also traveled to Arizona, Texas and Minnesota during the election cycle. He said he’s looking to campaign for Senate nominee Dr. Annie Andrews, nominee for governor state Rep. Jermaine Johnson, and First Congressional Democratic nominee Nancy Lacore while in the Palmetto State.
“It’s been about campaigning for Democrats to make sure that Democrats are winning everywhere,” Pritzker said in phone interview from Chicago. “Maybe one of the most important things that can happen for the state of Illinois is the Congress being taken over by a Democratic majority so that we can push back and fight back against what Donald Trump has done to the people of Illinois.”
During his trip to South Carolina on Saturday he’ll have events in Clarendon and Richland County, with the S.C. Democratic Party.
It’s his first visit to South Carolina since he was elected Illinois governor in 2018 as its speculated he will jump into the 2028 race for the White House.
His trip to South Carolina also includes speaking at the annual Freedom Awards Banquet of the NAACP South Carolina Conference.
It puts Pritzker in front of a Black audience, the key voting bloc in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary. The contest is key because every winner of it since 1992 has ended up on the party’s ticket except for 2024, when President Joe Biden won, but eventually stepped aside for Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party’s nominee.
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During his first term as governor, Pritzker signed legislation to legalize recreational marijuana, a capital bill to address the state’s infrastructure issues and a gambling expansion.
He touts signing bills to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, establishing universal paid leave, creating and doubling a child tax credit and making large investments in education and improving the student to teacher ratio in Illinois classrooms.
“Those are all things that are quite important for Black people in Illinois,” Pritzker said. “I’m really excited about the progress that we’ve made, and I think it’s had a tremendous impact for Black and brown communities across Illinois.”
He said he may touch on the redistricting efforts ahead of the midterm elections, an effort that failed in South Carolina earlier this year.
Brenda Murphy, the president of the NAACP SC State Conference, said she invited Pritzker to speak at the event after hearing him speak at the national NAACP convention in Chicago earlier this year.
“One thing that we want our communities to be aware of and to be clear on is what are our challenges today that we are faced with,” Murphy said. “We need to keep ourselves focused. We are nonpartisan, of course, it’s good to make sure that when our communities get out to vote, they are well-informed regarding issues, challenges that they need to consider when deciding or making a decision regarding who to vote for.”
Still, Pritzker would have to overcome those who may see his wealth as a negative if he jumped into the Democratic race.
When he first ran for governor in the 2018 election, it was disclosed Pritzker years earlier had ripped out the toilets of a second mansion he owned making the residence, which had been in disrepair and vacant, uninhabitable and garnering him a property tax break saving him more than $330,000 over five years. Pritzker during the 2018 campaign paid the back taxes, a task made possible by his wealth.
It’s a situation most people would not find themselves in or able to address quickly. Pritzker will have to show he can relate to those in the middle class.
“This isn’t about how much money you have or what you have. It’s about your values and how you carry those out,” Pritzker said. “I got elected in … 2018 because people saw that I was going to carry out the values of fighting for the middle class, putting Springfield back on their side, and then now here we are eight years later. Guess what? I have done those things.”
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