Gov. Rauner concedes to Pritzker
Democratic billionaire poured more than $170 million into 2-year campaign
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner conceded his reelection bid to billionaire Democrat J.B. Pritzker, according to Rauner’s campaign, the Hyatt hotel heir’s victory putting his party in near total control of state government by limiting the governor to a single term.
Rauner’s concession call to Pritzker came about 30 minutes after polls closed, campaign spokesman Will Allison said. Barely any votes had been counted in the bitter race in which the two candidates broke national campaign spending records by tapping their personal fortunes for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Pritzker pumped $171.5 million into his campaign fund over the course of two years. The money paid for a nonstop stream of advertising on TV and the internet to both attack Rauner and get Pritzker’s name in front of voters in a state where he’s never held elected office. And some of it went to other Democratic campaigns and causes, building the party with his personal wealth just like Rauner did for Illinois Republicans.
After self-funding his 2014 governor bid, Rauner put $50 million into his re-election campaign in December 2016 but hasn’t added money since. He’s struggled to unite Republican voters after his signature on laws to expand abortion, gay and immigrant rights angered conservatives and led to a primary bid he nearly lost.
The victor will control a massive state government with $7.5 billion in unpaid bills and will have to navigate a likely Democratic legislature to get his agenda moved.
Rauner supporters began gathering at his election night party at The Drake Hotel shortly after 6 p.m., an event held in a noticeably smaller room than the governor used previously.
The stage at the front of the room was backed by a large American flag, and two TVs near the stage were mostly being ignored as CNN began collecting national results.
Early in the evening, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin made the early rounds at the Pritzker party, confidently predicting a win for the Democrat. He noted the champagne glasses already in the ballroom.
Durbin praised Pritzker for efforts to stir support outside the Chicago area and said he believed the strategy should lead to victory.
“Pritzker did something different in this campaign,” he said. “Here was a Chicagoan, clearly a Chicagoan, who wasted no time getting downstate. I looked around and thought ‘this is what I’ve been looking for – a governor who starts off by unifying the whole state.’”
Pritzker has proposed overhauling the state’s tax structure but can’t do so unless voters approve the plan two years from now, and he frequently has rebuffed requests for specifics about how it would work. He favors legalizing sports betting and the recreational use of marijuana.
Rauner focused the final weeks of his campaign on a confidential report from Cook County’s top watchdog that Pritzker improperly received $330,000 in property tax breaks on one of his Gold Coast mansions as part of a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers.
Pritzker paid the money back, and also had to contend with racial controversies that arose inside his massive campaign organization. Three weeks before Election Day, several Pritzker staffers filed a federal lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in their months on the job, accusations he called “just not true.”
Weeks later, two of his campaign workers were fired over a video displayed on social media showing one of them wearing a dark facial cosmetic mask resembling blackface.
Both episodes stood to remind voters about an earlier storyline from Pritzker’s primary campaign, when he embarked on an apology tour after the Chicago Tribune released a secretly recorded federal government wiretap that was part of the corruption investigation of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is now in prison. The wiretap involved a replacement for then-President-elect Barack Obama for his U.S. Senate seat.
During the conversation, Pritzker pitched Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White as a replacement for Obama. White, Pritzker said, would take care of the “African-American thing” and would be the “least offensive” of the potential black candidates Blagojevich was considering. Pritzker also called former state Senate President Emil Jones “crass” and former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. “a nightmare.”