Gov. JB Pritzker sought to assure Illinois residents Thursday that he will fight to preserve the state’s protections on fronts including reproductive health, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights during Donald’s second term Trump at the White House.
“To all those who intend to come and take away freedom, opportunity and dignity from the people of Illinois, I remind you that a happy warrior is always a warrior. You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker said Thursday at a news conference in Chicago, where he made his first public appearance since the election.
Pritzker declined to speculate on what went wrong for Democrats this year, when Trump did much better in blue states, including Illinois, where he cut his losing margin by about half from both elections previous ones. The governor said a longer campaign could have benefited Vice President Kamala Harris, who was out of the race until President Joe Biden stepped down on July 21.
“Look, 107 days, I think that’s the number of days Kamala Harris had to run this campaign, and so it’s an extraordinarily short amount of time. She did an extraordinary job of making it as competitive as possible,” Pritzker said. “But more time would have been better.”
Questions about what Democrats could have done differently and why the election went poorly for Harris will be explored in the coming months, Pritzker said.
“And I think it would be premature for all of us to draw any conclusions today. You have to look at the data,” he said.
The governor is widely seen as a possible future candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, a spot now wide open for 2028. He did not say whether he would seek a third term in 2026 and declined to answer questions at this subject. THURSDAY.
He noted that Trump had been president during his first two years as governor and said he had spent a lot of time working “to defend Illinois against an awful lot of policies imposed by the Trump administration.”
“So I think that work is going to continue,” Pritzker said. “And I have nothing to announce today.”
Another possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, said Thursday he was calling a special December session of the state Legislature to resist Trump’s policies. In Illinois, lawmakers are expected to return to Springfield next week for their annual fall veto session, which could now include concerns about Trump’s next term.
Pritzker has long had a strained relationship with Trump, calling him from the stage of this summer’s Democratic National Convention “rich in one thing: stupidity.”
But the billionaire governor, who was sidelined after being seen as joining Harris on the Democratic ticket, said he accepted Trump’s victory and was ready to work with the new president.
“Donald Trump will be our next president. He won the election and we must all be ready to work together for the common good. In the months ahead, we should all focus on the peaceful transition of power, even if Donald Trump has not allowed it to his successor,” Pritzker, referring to Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election to to Biden and foment an attack on the US Capitol.
Hundreds of people are gathering in Chicago to oppose Donald Trump and express their disappointment with Democrats on the eve of the election.
At the start of his first campaign for governor in 2018, Pritzker also pledged to make Illinois “a firewall against Donald Trump’s destructive and bigoted agenda.”
Pritzker maintained his criticism, lambasting the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic from his lectern during his daily press briefings and calling it out personally during a conference call with other governors during the unrest which followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Attacks on Trump have only intensified during the 2024 campaign, with Pritzker frequently referencing the former president’s criminal conviction and other legal issues.
Pritzker, a Harris presidential campaign surrogate, repeatedly used words and phrases such as “racist,” “misogynist,” “homophobic,” “congenital liar,” “tried rapist” and “convicted felon.” to describe the Republican candidate, largely to the delight of many in his party’s liberal base.
Trump appears to have taken note, telling tech mogul Elon Musk during a livestream this summer: “Illinois is being mismanaged with Pritzker. He’s a real loser.
Pritzker also took his fight for abortion rights to the national stage, creating and funding the dark money group Think Big America. The group, which is not required to disclose its donors but is widely supported by Pritzker, participated in abortion rights votes in eight states.
Seven of those measures won voter approval. But a Florida measure failed to reach the 60% support needed to pass, while Nebraska voters rejected protections for a ban on abortion starting at 12 weeks of pregnancy.
“We know the fight for reproductive freedom has only just begun and we will not stop until access to abortion is guaranteed for every woman, regardless of zip code,” the Gate said Wednesday -Think Big spokesperson, Christina Amestoy, in a press release.
While Pritzker signed a measure in 2019 enshrining the right to abortion into Illinois state law, there are no protections in the state constitution and his supporters have chosen not to request amendment this year.
The governor recalled Thursday, as he often does, his political origin story of stuffing political mail into envelopes with his mother, “back when it must have seemed like the pace of change was painfully slow.” heartbreaking.”
“I know there are a lot of women this week, especially young women, who are wondering if they will ever see a woman president,” Pritzker said, joined by Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton. “And I want to tell them, I too am tired of having to explain to my daughter and my son too that eventually the time will come, but not now. Yet here we are again.
Jeremy Gorner contributed to this report.
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