* JB Pritzker missed yesterday’s forum at NIU, but his statement was read before the questions began. Here’s part of it…

Hello everyone. Thank you to DeKalb Stands and Northern Illinois University for hosting this great event. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be with you tonight. My running mate Juliana Stratton was looking forward to joining, but unfortunately my opponents didn’t want to share a stage with her. I can’t say I blame them. Juliana is an incredible woman and a powerful fighter for Illinois and together we’re going to put Springfield back on the side of working families.

* After reading his statement, the moderator quickly corrected Pritzker. The other candidates did not object to Stratton’s presence. It was the organizers, she said, who set those rules…

That video came in over the transom from someone who was most definitely not with the Pritzker campaign.

* All of that was written hours and hours ago. The above video was supposed to be just a harmless add-on to the other NIU forum post about Kennedy and pot.

But I think somebody in the Pritzker campaign has subscribed to my YouTube page, so they got a notification and watched the video after I uploaded it and then asked for time to comment. After that, things got a bit testy.

This is from a September 21 e-mail sent by the organizers…

Also, the lineup of candidates has changed slightly. Chris Kennedy is joining the group. J.B. Pritzker can no longer come, but Juliana Stratton will appear in his place.

So, as of a couple of weeks ago, the organizers were obviously OK with Stratton appearing.

* Galia Slayen at the Pritzker campaign maintains that Kennedy threatened not to attend if Stratton was allowed on the stage…

“It’s unfortunate that after Chris Kennedy skipped at least 10 forums and sent surrogates like Emil Jones to represent him, that he refused to be on the same stage with Juliana Stratton and threatened not to attend if JB wasn’t there. To be clear, the forum organizers had originally accepted having Juliana attend until Chris Kennedy’s campaign complained. JB has attended over 25 multi-candidate appearances and looks forward to continuing to share his message with voters across the state.”

* Rebecca Evans at the Kennedy campaign called Slayen’s statement “petty and insulting to voters”…

It was a unanimous decision by the organizing board to keep yesterday’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates forum to just candidates for governor. For the Pritzker campaign to spend their time citing a tally of forum attendance that doesn’t accurately reflect all of the events and meetings Chris has with people throughout Illinois is petty and insulting to voters who want a substantive leader to unite our state. It’s also a signal that, despite paying millions of dollars for TV ads, Pritzker’s campaign must be feeling very insecure about their candidate’s status in this race.

After waiting hours on both campaigns to provide their responses, I reached out to the person who sent that e-mail about Stratton at around 2 o’clock. So far, I’ve heard nothing back. I’ll let you know.

But, hey, if nothing else, I did inadvertently manage to get both spokespersons to go after each other on the record.

Progress! /s

I often host a party the weekend before the primary and invite top staffers from every campaign to attend. I’ve never once seen a fight or even an argument. Next March’s could be different.

*** UPDATE ***  From the organizer…

Hi,

We had a great forum last night. We certainly missed Mr. Pritzker and Mr. Pawar, but the five candidates who attended did an excellent job and had a really appreciative audience.

In answer to your question, both are correct. It was a unanimous decision of our group, made after a call from Kennedy’s campaign objecting to Stratton’s being substituted for Pritzker. However, it was only Kennedy who objected, not the other candidates (the reason for our correction to Pritzker’s statement). Kennedy did not threaten “not to attend if JB wasn’t there,” as stated in your email. What Kennedy’s staffer said was that he wasn’t prepared to go onstage with a lieutenant governor candidate and would send his own lieutenant governor candidate as his surrogate in the event that Stratton was involved.

Deborah