Gov. J.B. Pritzker told Harvard students self-financing political campaigns isn’t the answer, calling for campaign finance reform. Pritzker self-financed both of his gubernatorial campaigns for a total of $323 million.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker advocated for campaign finance reform at a student forum hosted by Harvard University recently.
“Do I think the self-funding campaigns are the answer to politics? No, absolutely not,” Pritzker said. “We need campaign finance reform both in Illinois and nationally.”
Pritzker spent $323 million between his 2018 and 2022 campaigns. On top of self-financing his campaign, Pritzker donated $24 million to the Democratic Governors Association.
Pritzker also showed how to skirt campaign finance rules. The two biggest donors for Illinois Supreme Court Justices Mary Kay O’Brien and Elizabeth Rochford were “JB for Governor” and the “Jay Robert Pritzker Revocable Trust.”
By donating through his trust as well as his campaign committee, Pritzker circumvented a campaign finance law he himself signed prohibiting “any single person” from donating more than $500,000 to a state judicial campaign.
Now the Illinois Supreme Court is hearing arguments challenging the SAFE-T Act in which Pritzker is listed as a defendant, just a few months after donating $2 million to two of the justices’ campaigns.
Read more here.
Leave a Reply