J.B. names chief of staff and heavy-hitting transition team

Just hours after delivering a decisive victory, Democrat J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday announced his transition team — full of heavy-hitters like former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, Grosvenor Capital Management CEO Michael Sacks and Illinois AFLCIO President Michael Carrigan.

Pritzker, too, named his administration’s chief of staff: his campaign manager Anne Caprara.

Juliana Stratton, the country’s first African-American lieutenant governor, will chair the transition committee. Members include Barbara Bowman, an early childhood education advocate and a former consultant to the U.S. secretary of education during President Barack Obama’s first term; Carrigan; Edgar; Sol Flores, executive director of La Casa Norte, a Humboldt Park social service agency, and a former congressional candidate; and Marty Nesbitt, co-CEO of Chicagobased private equity firm The Vistria Group.

There are some Obama ties. Nesbitt is head of the Obama Foundation, and Bowman is former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s mother.

The transition committee staff includes Caprara, former Hillary Clinton organizer and Pritzker campaign consultant Nikki Budzinski, Pritzker’s political director Sean Rapelyea, former Comptroller Dan Hynes; state Rep. Christian Mitchell, who is also serving as the state Democratic Party’s interim executive director; Sacks and former Chicago Board of Education board member Jesse Ruiz. Ruiz is the current president of the Chicago Park District.