CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — As Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told a packed Texas Democratic luncheon that being governor is the best job he’ll “ever have,” someone in the crowd chimed in.
“Run for president!” an attendee screamed.
Pritzker, who has repeatedly sidestepped questions about his own political future, took the interruption at a Texas Democratic Convention lunch on Friday in stride.
“It must be a cousin,” the governor said.
Presidential run or not, Pritzker is making some useful inroads with Texas Democrats, from giving them refuge to hosting a fundraiser this week in Chicago for Senate Democratic hopeful James Talarico. The Illinois governor headlined the Texas Democratic party convention luncheon about 10 months after he helped welcome 40 Texas House Democrats as they denied Republicans a quorum needed to approve new maps to expand the GOP’s congressional majority.
Pritzker has been polling between 1% and 7% in recent presidential polls, though he has insisted he’s focusing on his reelection bid. He is no stranger to big political speeches before state party Democrats and used the Texas platform to zing President Donald Trump and critique a “complacent” Democratic Party that he says needs a full review before the 2028 presidential campaign. And he spoke to spiritual Texans about the need for faith and action over pure optimism to address a broken American promise.
“He [Trump] has accomplished in his presidency what he never achieved in his business career. He’s finally making a profit,” Pritzker said. “And Trump has turned 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from the people’s house to a nuthouse, where he’s retreated to the last and only respite of the desperate and the damned: paranoid self-delusion.”
Pritzker said he knows Democrats are sick of “talking about Trump,” but he said the party can’t offer solutions for the future until they “fully and honestly confront what he is doing to this country.”
“Donald Trump is a reflecting pool of our politics,” Pritzker said. “You can paint the bottom blue, but it won’t conceal the polluted water above.”
Pritzker blamed Democratic Party leaders for growing “complacent” and “letting nostalgia for parts of our political past replace efforts to innovate our political future.”
“Unwilling to break old customs to build new foundations, it seems like everyone on our side thought democracy was a garden that didn’t need tending, forgetting that weeds need to be pulled up by their roots, not just occasionally mowed down,” Pritzker said.
The governor has recently leaned into criticizing the Democratic Party as it reels in the mess of the 2024 presidential election. But he also said he feels “a mild shift in the blades,” including electoral wins in the past year, shifting polls and the growing defiance of GOP politicians.
“I think it’s time to demand from our leaders that they show empathy to the struggling, compassion to the destitute,” Pritzker said. “I don’t think cruelty is some virtue that shows us how much of a man you are. Blatant racism doesn’t make you tough, it just makes you a racist. I don’t think that the constant barrage of insults that comes from the president’s social media account is some new brand of politics. I just think it’s mean, and I think that we should say that to the American people plainly and clearly, because most Americans choose kindness over cruelty.”
As for whether Pritzker would make a good presidential candidate, Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier, one of the Texas Democrats who came to Illinois last year, told the Chicago Sun-Times Pritzker is a “fighter” and a leader who “stepped up when we needed him.”
“We can’t keep doing things the way that we have done,” Collier said of Democrats. “And we need leaders who recognize that and who are courageous enough to take the reins and steer us into a different direction.”