What Do Politicians Want? Something For Us— Or Something For Themselves?

A Little Look At JB Pritzker And Mike Lawler

Do you see aa president here?

On Sunday, while Mike Lawler suffered through a raucous town hall in West Nyack in Rockland County, having just read that his dream of escaping Congress with a gubernatorial run have been shattered by Elise Stefanik, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was having a very different kind of experience at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire. Pritzker, a massively overweight billionaire, wants to be president and New Hampshire Democrats were eager to see what he had to offer. His 30 minute speech had a lot of the kind of aggressive partisan populism Democrats are looking for. Lisa Lerer and Reid Epstein reported that by the time he was finished speaking, those in the ballroom were “ready to storm the political barricades against Trump”— but perhaps also against the Democratic Party establishment (ie- Chuck Schumer).

“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” he told the group of Democratic activists, officials and donors, who jumped to their feet with hoots and applause. “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”

“The reckoning is finally here,” he declared.

For the Trump administration, of course, but also for his own party.

In the fight over the future of the Democratic Party, Pritzker has emerged as a leader of an insurgent faction calling for a full-throated, unflinching barrage of attacks on Trump, his Republican allies and their right-wing agenda.

His speech was a call to action more aggressive and comprehensive than perhaps any other by a major liberal figure since Trump took office, rivaled only by rallying cries from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on their Western tour. [Let’s not forget Chris Murphy.] But unlike them, Pritzker set his stem-winding address in a state with a century-long hold on the nation’s first presidential primary contest— a striking statement on its own.

…While other governors have made ham-handed attempts at reconciliation with Trump, Pritzker has turned his state into a bulwark of opposition to the administration’s crackdown on immigration, cuts to the federal government and tariffs on other countries.

He has done so as some congressional Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have urged their party to be selective with their attacks against the president to avoid alienating independent voters who supported him. Pritzker, by contrast, wants his party to adopt a posture of zero accommodation.

“The main divide within the Democratic Party is not between left and right— it’s whether you think this is a constitutional crisis or this is politics as usual,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive activist group Indivisible. “Pritzker is really demonstrating what it looks like to lead an opposition party against the overreaching authority of the federal government.”

In recent months, Pritzker has preached a gospel of staunch resistance to some of the most engaged Democratic activists across the country, delivering the keynote speech at party fund-raisers in Illinois and Austin, Texas, and at an annual gala for the Human Rights Campaign in Los Angeles. Next month, he is set to speak at a fund-raising dinner in Detroit for the Michigan Democratic Party.

In his speech in New Hampshire, he criticized Democrats who have admonished the party for its perceived overreach as “timid, not bold.”

“Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces,” he said. “Today, as the blaze reaches the rafters, the pundits and politicians— whose simpering timidity served as kindle for the arsonists— urge us now not to reach for a hose.”

While his targets went unnamed, there were obvious candidates: Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, the host of a podcast that has featured stars of the MAGA movement, and the Democratic strategist James Carville, who has argued for “a strategic political retreat” until Trump’s approval ratings fall.

“Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people and trans kids and immigrants,” Mr. Pritzker said, “instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.”

His comments reflected how, for now, Democrats are chiefly divided not over health care or other policy issues, but over the extent to which they should oppose Trump and his agenda.

While some party donors and consultants have urged moderation, Pritzker is tapping into the Democratic base’s visceral desire for a fight— and for a leader.

“Voters didn’t turn out for Democrats last November— not because they don’t want us to fight for our values, but because they think we don’t want to fight for our values,” he said in his speech. “We need to knock off the rust of poll-tested language, decades of stale decorum. It’s obscured our better instincts.”

Neera Tanden, the president of the [centrist] think tank the Center for American Progress and a longtime fixture in Democratic politics, predicted that these early months of the Trump administration could reverberate into the 2028 primary contest. Voters, she said, won’t forget how potential presidential candidates behaved.

“People are going to remember how Democrats acted in this moment,” said Tanden, whose group hosted Pritzker this year. “At the moment when Trump was the scariest, what did Democrats do? Did they roll over? Make inroads to right-wing people or something? Or did they stand up and defend our principles?”

An heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune with a net worth estimated around $3.5 billion, Pritzker is one of the richest elected officials in the country— a position that has given him a measure of political independence because he is not as reliant on party donors.

In 2018, he transformed himself from a longtime donor who was a major funder of Hillary Clinton’s two presidential campaigns into a formidable politician in his own right. He has self-funded two campaigns for governor and spread his wealth to support Democratic candidates for governor and the state parties in battlegrounds— Wisconsin in particular.

In 2023, as he expanded his political brand, Pritzker established a political action committee called Think Big America, which spent millions of dollars backing ballot measures seeking to enshrine abortion rights into state law.

Meanwhile, no one loves a slick, shady, dishonest candidate and “Pritzker, of course, rebuffed any suggestion that his appearance on Sunday night in Manchester, N.H., represented the opening bell of the 2028 Democratic primary race. He said he was focused on backing the party’s efforts in next year’s midterm elections.”