Gov. JB Pritzker waves at a supporter at a rally Thursday at Grand Crossing Park Field House on the South Side, where he announced his campaign for a third term as Illinois governor. Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
“I ran for governor in 2018 to change our story,” Gov. JB Pritzker told a Chicago crowd on Thursday as he announced his bid for a third term. “I ran for governor in 2022 to keep telling our story. And I am running for governor in 2026 to protect our story.”
This general theme of protecting what Pritzker maintains is Illinois’ progress from damage by President Donald Trump will be the foundation of the governor’s reelection bid — at least for the foreseeable future.
The governor’s state office provided an example of this potential harm when it warned of a provision in the congressional budget proposal to shift billions of dollars in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program costs from the federal government to the states.
“For Illinois, that shift could mean taking on more than $1.2 billion in additional costs annually, placing a massive strain on Illinois’ budget and threatening funding for other essential services like education and healthcare,” the statement read.
The U.S. Senate’s parliamentarian had originally ruled against the SNAP provision in the chamber’s budget reconciliation bill, but the majority Republicans revised the language and it was approved Thursday.
That $1.2 billion will likely pale in comparison to expected Medicaid cuts. Illinois simply doesn’t have the recurring revenue needed to make up the difference.
“Earthquakes are coming,” Pritzker warned in his address about the coming months and years.
So, for now, it’s “Pritzker the Protector.”
But, eventually, it would be nice to see some fresh and new ideas.
The governor’s 2021 reelection announcement was all about looking back at his leadership during the pandemic. Four years later, his latest announcement was heavy on his accomplishments and had little about the future, except that it looks really bleak under Trump and he will do his best to shield the state from it.
The Trump references were so thick that you could conceivably call this the first kickoff speech of the 2028 presidential campaign.
“The workers of today and tomorrow choose Illinois because we built an iron wall around their freedoms — and because we told the fascist freak show fanatics to run their experiments on ending democracy somewhere else,” the governor said.
Except Pritzker is currently only running for reelection. Maybe try one election at a time. And while 2019 — his first year in office — was a whirlwind of activity, much more still needs to be done.
For example, the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign released a study this week showing the state has an existing housing shortage of 142,000 units and needs to build 227,000 new homes over the next five years “to keep pace with demand.”
The governor said housing costs too much during his speech but didn’t say what he’d do about it.
You may recall that Pritzker demanded action on the housing shortage during his State of the State address in February, saying his special task force on housing affordability had come up with some solutions and those should be enacted. But, after some progress, the bill stalled out.
One of the panel’s short-term ideas was to require the state’s pension funds to invest in housing development. But the provisions to require or incentivize local governments to remove barriers to new housing was a big sticking point.
Pritzker’s implementation record leaves much to be desired. Six years after legalizing cannabis, for instance, the original equity promises are nowhere near fulfilled. If they were, it would be a whole lot easier to convince the Illinois House to regulate the intoxicating hemp “gray market.”
And the governor was right when he said, “the answer starts with growing Illinois’ economy.” But economic growth as a whole has most definitely lagged here.
“Let me be clear,” Pritzker said. “There is no Mission Accomplished banner to stand under today. Yes, we have addressed so many of our old problems — but new ones always arise. History is an endless relay race. Our job is not to look for the finish line but to protect the baton as we run our assigned leg.”
Are we better off as a state than we were in 2018? Governmentally, yes. Of course. I would never want to revert to the state governments we had during the first 18 years of this century.
Could we as a state be much better? Absolutely. And it’s time to try. But that requires some concrete plans.
Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
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