* CNN takes a look at Gov. JB Pritzker’s campaign contributions and activities…
The billionaire has funneled nearly $40 million to Democratic candidates and groups in the midterms, donating to everything from the party’s biggest super PACs to state legislative campaigns. As part of that, he’s helping to fund a $20 million effort in the final weeks of the midterms to support Democratic efforts to push deeper into red territory in their bid to capture the House majority.
“This is it,” Pritzker said in an interview. “As far as I’m concerned, focusing on anything other than this election is folly for anybody in politics right now. We must win, we Democrats.”
* Michigan…
In Michigan, a $500,000 donation from Pritzker to the state Democratic Party has helped fund an expansion of organizing statewide that includes 25 offices and 80 people, according to the party’s chairman, Curtis Hertel.
* Early states…
Some of Pritzker’s giving could be especially helpful in states that will vote early in the 2028 Democratic nomination process. Pritzker gave $100,000 to a super PAC that supported Stefany Shaheen in the September primary for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District. She prevailed and is poised to be heavily courted in 2028 with New Hampshire going third among early voting states. […]
And in a somewhat unusual move, Pritzker’s Ready for the Fight PAC recently took over $2.8 million in ad reservations supporting New Mexico Rep. Gabe Vasquez in his competitive reelection race, freeing up money for the House Majority PAC as it tries to play more offense. Like Michigan, New Mexico is a new addition to the early-state window, slated to hold its primary a week after New Hampshire in February 2028.
* Texas…
Pritzker first donated $200,000 to [Gina Hinojosa’s] gubernatorial campaign on September 18, about two weeks after dozens of Latino leaders sent Beshear, the Democratic Governors Association chairman, a letter asking him to invest $10 million in the race. While Beshear has resisted that larger sum, he spoke with Hinojosa on September 29 and told her the DGA would commit $1 million to the race, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Pritzker has since announced donating another $1 million to Hinojosa.
“Once [Pritzker] showed he believed in us, it helped open the door for a lot of other people to believe in us,” said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist working for Hinojosa.
* Staff…
“His team looks under the hood, looks for a competent staff, [asks], ‘Can he make a difference?’” the Democrat said.
In Michigan, Hertel said he met with Pritzker shortly after he became chair last year and “walked him through the organizing work that we were doing and what the impact of his dollars could be.” Hertel said they talk “on a regular basis” and he speaks with Pritzker’s staff “a lot.”
In Nevada, Pritzker aides join in on weekly strategy sessions to pass a ballot measure to create a state constitutional right to abortion. Pritzker has donated $650,000 to the campaign for the ballot measure.
“We rely on them,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. “The check is important, but having staff capacity — that’s great too.”
More at the link.
- Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 9:18 am:
Dude’s a player.
Bailey’s weaker than weak second attempt is like grass running against a lawnmower.
- Steve - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 9:31 am:
The vanguard of the working class party is… billionaires.
- JB13 - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 10:00 am:
– focusing on anything other than this election is folly for anybody in politics right now –
I’m going to try that with my boss.
“Sorry I didn’t get my work done. I’m just so focused on this election. See you in December.”
- JS Mill - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 10:07 am:
=The vanguard of the working class party is… billionaires.=
LOL. That is a special level of hypocrisy.
- Steve - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 10:09 am:
I forgot Reid Hoffman and Alex Soros. They have working class cred.
- City Zen - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 10:50 am:
==In Michigan, a $500,000 donation from Pritzker to the state Democratic Party has helped fund an expansion of organizing statewide==
Pritzker dontated $1 million to that same committee in 2024. They could ask why the 50% reduction, but they probably already know the answer.
- Irreverent - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 10:50 am:
@Steve
Not the first time a wealthy class traitor has been the MVP. “FDR” ring a bell?
- Candy Dogood - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 10:55 am:
===“His team looks under the hood, looks for a competent staff, [asks], ‘Can he make a difference?’” the Democrat said.===
What an odd inclusion. What’s the team? Hopefully only direct and exclusive employers of the PAC. How is this anything other than arbitrary? It’s not like the PAC can sit down with the candidate’s staff and coordinate or review the campaign’s plans.
Is it which safe incumbents they’ve worked for?
Which primary campaign they worked for in 2020, 2016, or 2008 — if any of the people involved are even old enough?
Who their daddy is and what he does?
If they graduated from the right schools?
The audacity of all of this is the Governor’s staff and the Governor himself don’t have a whole lot of meaningful experience with competitive general election races and they want to evaluate whether or not the staff of other campaigns and other state parties are competent?
What a can of worms to open.
Sometimes statements to the press are better kept simple. “This PAC supports candidates where the Governor thinks he can make a difference.”
- Irreverent - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 11:05 am:
@Candy
By that logic, how does anyone ever hire anyone? Fact is there are places in this country where the Dems’ ground game is somewhere between awful and nonexistent, and a hundred trillion dollars wouldn’t be enough to change it if the same people are going to be running the show. Refusing to acknowledge that is not going to help anyone.
Your response here kinda reads “I don’t understand how this would work, so it’s impossible for anyone to do it well.”
- Steve - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 11:31 am:
A little different times than FDR’s era . “Democrats now represent 24 of the 25 highest-income congressional districts” .
https://archive.ph/gB7QR
- JS Mill - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 11:43 am:
=“Democrats now represent 24 of the 25 highest-income congressional districts” .=
You can do both, unlike the current president who seems to think the presidency is a grift.
- Demoralized - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 11:44 am:
==I’m going to try that with my boss.==
Hopefully you have better reading comprehension when it comes to dealings with your boss because you sure aren’t showing any evidence of reading comprehension abilities with that comment.
- Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 11:47 am:
“Democrats now represent 24 of the 25 highest-income congressional districts” .
Higher education has a myriad of end results.
- Annon'in - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 11:48 am:
Does the group checking under the hood still include the guy who “managed” the Fair Tax debacle? That could devalue any gains from these $$$s. BTW are the other nonBillionsire’spendin’ too.
- Rich Miller - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 12:00 pm:
Steve, you missed the entire point… again
- Candy Dogood - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 12:01 pm:
===By that logic, how does anyone ever hire anyone? ===
We’re not talking about a candidate or campaign making a hiring decision based off of someone’s resume, experience, or interview. We’re talking about a a third party — a PAC — making evaluations about campaign staff without being able to do things like interview the staff for the job or examine internal reports. Things that would generally be an example of illegal coordination.
I do think it is very important for a well heeled campaign to do some amount of vetting for a campaign staff, especially for a high profile campaign to do so, but the caveat here is that lower profile races or races that are run in areas that have a high cook partisan index do not necessarily have the resources or experience to do so — they also don’t have the appeal to attract campaign staff that would rather work for a “winning” race that they know is going to win.
The point I was trying to make, and perhaps I did not make it clearly enough, is that campaign outsiders — like a PAC — or staff somewhere in JB’s broadly defined political structure, do not have a reasonable ability to make anything other than a superficial evaluation based off of limited information. Without an established metric, they’re just applying whatever bias they bring to the process — the worst yet is that they may not be aware of the bias that they’re bringing into the process.
Add to this the three solid decades of electoral defeats that the Democratic Party has experienced — except for when the GOP has driven up their negatives so bad that people give the Democrats a majority that they are politically incapable of keeping as they continue to fail to deliver to deliver on popular policies would both improve lives and keep them in office — it’s not exactly like there’s an ideal form of a political campaign staffer that can get the job done.
So yeah, I think it is a fair question to ask how they’re evaluating staff competence and what exactly they’re using to evaluate it?
Especially in the gray area where the director of a PAC can’t call up a campaign manager and say, “Hey Campaign manager, tell me why I should give your campaign a million dollars?” (But maybe my belief is in the spirit of the law, and not how people are actually following it — what’s the Governor say? Perhaps his PACs struggle to actualize campaign law.)
The stupidest thing to do is look at a resume and say “I don’t like that you worked for that campaign” or “you worked for a campaign that lost” because, believe it or not, some people don’t have rich parents to fall back on and have to take a job with whatever campaign is hiring and didn’t have the connections to get an internship on the hill and have to actually be able to pay their rent.
- low level - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 2:37 pm:
Everytime I read a story like this I cant help but remember working for broke Dem statewide campaigns like Netsch and Poshard. It really brings a smile to my face. Gen X and older Dems may be able to relate.
I also find it terribly amusing when Republicans complain about a billionaire spending money in politics. Hilarious. They must miss the irony.
- Remember the Alamo II - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 3:13 pm:
Candy, I think that you are way overcomplicating things here. You don’t think that the Governor has relationships in Michigan that he can lean on to tell him whether a campaign was legit or if they didn’t know what they are doing? It’s not that hard.
- Candy Dogood - Monday, Oct 19, 26 @ 6:16 pm:
===I think that you are way overcomplicating things here.===
I am, but I have reasons to be skeptical. This is not the first time that our billionaire Governor has used a PAC. His PACs have also had mixed results, which one would expect if they’re taking big risks.
I don’t recall the Governor’s other PACs texting folks to solicit small dollar contributions, but this one is sending a lot of text messages doing just that.
The Governor has another tool in his arsenal, which is harder to deploy late in the election year, but he can help campaigns directly fund raise by hosting or being a feature at their fund raisers. I’m not sure why donor dollars should be passed through his PAC, but that seems to be what this PAC is suggesting people do.
===whether a campaign was legit or if they didn’t know what they are doing?===
Campaigns do not need to be legit for the candidate to win. The “legitness” of a campaign is something that is subject to change. Staff do not need to know what they are doing for the candidate to win. The candidate doesn’t even need to know what they’re doing to win. We have several home grown examples of this here in Illinois.
A billionaire self funding a PAC to pick his favorites can just be a billionaire self funding a PAC to pick his favorites. It is a very normal thing.
A politician supporting candidates in states that are early in the primary schedule is also a very normal thing.