Today’s quotables
Monday, Dec 15, 2025 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From the Washington Post…
“There’s very few people who can afford to spend even a fraction of the money that Pritzker spent on his campaigns,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, a group that advocates for greater transparency and public financing in elections. “You really want a system where that’s your pool of talent for your representatives?”
“I think it’s dangerous,” she said, “because even if you have this exception of the — quote, unquote — ‘good billionaire,’ it’s not a good basis for a political system.”
* And…
Teri Ricci, a 65-year-old retired university employee from Carbondale, Illinois, said she initially had no interest in backing “just another gazillionaire,” but ended up volunteering for Pritzker’s gubernatorial campaigns.
“He’s not in it for the money. He’s already got the money,” Ricci said in an interview at a Pritzker campaign event this summer as he launched his reelection bid. The first time Ricci heard him speak, Pritzker told the crowd that the good thing about having a lot of money was that he was not beholden to anyone.
“That’s what sold me,” she said.
Discuss.
- NIU Grad - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:11 am:
What worries me is what happens after Pritzker. He’s able to stand on his own two feet because he hasn’t had to be in the pocket of special interests for fundraising. But he also has had to subsidize his own office’s staff to retain talent instead of pursuing official increases in their salary.
Are billionaires the perpetual future of Governors in Illinois?
- Rich Miller - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:19 am:
===Are billionaires the perpetual future of Governors in Illinois? ===
Is there another politically active Democratic billionaire here?
None spring immediately to mind.
- Rich Miller - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:20 am:
…Oh, wait. There’s Laura Ricketts. Never seemed like potential candidate material, but I suppose one never knows.
- Pundent - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:26 am:
If given the choice I’d rather have a self-funded billionaire candidate than a candidate funded by unknown billionaires, corporations, and dark money. And the Supreme Court has essentially created these alternatives.
- New Day - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:26 am:
I’d say the chances of Laura running are somewhere between zero and absolute zero.
- Rich Miller - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:29 am:
===somewhere between zero and absolute zero===
Likely, yes.
- Anyone Remember - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:31 am:
The “problem” is for each Pritzker there are multiple Rauners … particularly when you consider states with Initiatives (Koch Brother(s) nationwide, Rex Sinquefield in Missouri, multiple “tech bros” in California).
- Original Rambler - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:35 am:
I think JB has proven himself to be more of an altruistic billionaire. He’s not the only one (Warren Buffett comes to mind) but not many seem eager to take the leap to public office. I think
Youngkin in Virginia was one on the GOP side. Teri Ricci’s evaluation makes sense to me. And I would echo Pundent’s comment.
- Pot calling kettle - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:42 am:
I agree with both sentiments. I don’t like rich white guys buying their way into office. We got lucky with JB, but he’s a case where the exception proves the rule.
The Trump admin shows the down side of letting the wealthy run the show. Most want policies that protect what they have and allow the accumulation of more wealth. It results in less of everything for the vast majority.
In this new Gilded Age, we really need to move money from the super wealthy back into the broader economy. It won’t be easy, but going back to the some of the policies in place in the 1950’s by removing barriers to unionization and raising taxes on the wealthy might move things in the right direction.
I think step 1 is to get the disengaged public to stop reacting to bells and whistles and shiny toys offered up by the oligarchs and use some critical thinking to pull apart their well-funded promotions to reveal the underlying money grab.
How that is done without big money is the trick - previous movements like Occupy have fallen flat - maybe the No Kings movement will take us farther.
- Three Dimensional Checkers - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:47 am:
To me, it’s not the money, but the privileges that are the negative for Gov. Pritzker.
It seems like Gov. Pritzker lost to Schakowsky in 1998, hung around on the fringes of Illinois politics for basically 20 years and managed his inheritance, then ran for Governor when the timing was almost perfect for him. He has done a great job as governor. It does not make him a bad guy, and the inequities of life are what they are, but it does not make him relatable either. There are very few people in the world who could follow his path.
- Candy Dogood - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 11:54 am:
===Discuss. ===
I don’t have my check from Team Pritzker to pay for my expertise in how to make a billionaire more palatable, especially given that there have been other billionaires who have sought the Democratic nomination and failed pretty spectacularly. If I am to give it away for free, I would at least expect to be giving it away for free in a fashion where I’m going to get some credit. Especially the kind of credit one gets from being ignored and discounted and still being right at the end of the day.
But I like the Governor enough to weigh in in the hopes that someone might hear it and I know that on this blog that there are a few people who might look back in 18 months and give credit where credit is due.
The problem the Governor has is that even this article which is suggesting a leader from the “one percent” is favorable. Sure, the Governor is in the 1%. If we’re discussing net worth, getting to the 1% in net worth requires a mere 11 to 13 million dollars. That figure compared to the Governor’s immense personal wealth is a tiny and insignificant sum.
The governor has financed his own campaigns and political operations at several times that mere $13 million dollars. While it is a very large amount of his personal fortune he has pumped into political operations — in that same time frame his personal fortune has grown. When your networth is nearly 4 billion dollars spending 500 million on political projects still has no real meaningful impact on his financial situation.
The Governor has benefited personally from a economic system that has harmed, continues to harm, and actively seeks to harm tens of millions of people in this country every day. He is the face of massive wealth inequality.
If he wants to be taken seriously by democratic primary voters in a national setting he can’t show up defending the system that has made him so unimaginably rich to people who cannot afford basic necessities and cannot afford access to medicine.
If he doesn’t make his campaign about a referendum on how our political and economic systems have failed a majority of Americans then someone else will make his campaign the face of America’s failed economic systems and he will never politically cover from that.
And they won’t be nice about it.
When it comes to billionaires, Governor Pritzker can argue that he is the exception, not the rule. But if he’s going to do that he needs to recognize that a lot of people are starting to understand that the billionaires are the problem.
So what’s the Governor’s plan to address the billionaire problem?
If the Governor runs for President, that’s the first question his campaign will need to answer and it will need to be a pillar of his campaign.
If he doesn’t his mere presence on the campaign trail will help draw a lot of attention to the candidates that are running with solutions to the billionaire problem and be an easy foil if he is painted into a box defending a status quo that has made him richer beyond the dreams of most of us mere wage earners.
From the WaPO Article
===because they were truly loyal to him===
This isn’t a Pritzker quote, but if true loyalty is the test it is going to be awfully hard to put together a team that can win nationally.
- Big Tom - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 12:06 pm:
When wealth shapes agendas and failure carries little cost for decision makers, democracy retains its form but loses substance. What’s the line about hoping half the people we are for being better than half the people we are against?
- Jocko - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 12:21 pm:
==In this new Gilded Age==
except billionaires are no longer bound by noblesse oblige and the Citizens United ruling means they have all three branches of government under their sway.
- JS Mill - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 12:43 pm:
It is not about the money and absolutely about the person. Naive? Sure. How is it not true?
In Illinois, we are lucky that the billionaire that we elected has governed to benefit the people. We may disagree about some policy issues and programmatic issues, but the evidence is clear that Pritzkers policies have not benefited him or his financially. The same cannot be said nationally. And while it is true that to one degree or another, this has been the case at the national level for some time, it has never been this direct and to this degree.
Citizens United simply added and exponent to the power of money to corrupt politics. Somehow, someway we need to reduce that effect.
- AlfondoGonz - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 12:46 pm:
I distrust people with money because I’ve known enough people with money. When JB ran, I figured him to be another rich guy who wanted a hobby that gave him power. But this state needed someone to displace Rauner.
Trust can be earned. JB has earned my trust. I don’t think supporting a billionaire now means we can only support billionaires moving forward. It’s also naive to pretend that this is only a rich man’s game now; none of the founding fathers were rubbing pennies together.
Inflation makes the money in politics seems like more than it always was, but that’s not really the case. The rich have always had a symbiotic relationship with the powerful; people just have more money now. Well, some people.
- Iron Duke - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 12:53 pm:
JB is not financially beholden to the government unions and trial lawyers, but you would never know it, because he never crossed them.
He could clearly establish some credibility with moderates by distancing himself from the radical CTU leadership given their cratering popularity but he can’t seem to do it.
- Socially DIstant Watcher - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 1:00 pm:
@Candy
==where I’m going to get some credit==
Are you rethinking your CapFax nickname?
- H-W - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 1:12 pm:
JS Mill +1
- Grandson of Man - Monday, Dec 15, 25 @ 1:53 pm:
“ALl BiLLiOnAIreS aRe BaD.” That kind of thinking actually helps bring about things that are ironically not wanted.
Many couldn’t vote for Kamala and Hillary (because she’s a corporate shill), yet it resulted in a boomerang sort of effect: union rights stripped, abortion rights stripped, big tax giveaways to the wealthy, climate incentives scrapped, military in cities, tariffs, de-unionization of the federal government, big federal worker cuts, etc. Are Hillary and Kamala personally “punished?” Hardly, they are both well off in many ways.