This billionaire Democrat is ready to brawl

President Donald Trump has not yet completed 100 days in office, but for Democratic governors, the shadow primary for 2028 is underway as they test messages and search for ways to flip the script from the defeatism of their party in Congress.

Into this fray has stepped Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a progressive billionaire pitching his potent combination of working-class issues, sharp business sense and reputation as a good-natured brawler.

That last was on display shortly after Trump’s reelection. With Trump promising immediate mass deportations, Pritzker warned he would defend vulnerable communities. "A happy warrior is still a warrior," Pritzker said. "You come for my people, you come through me."

He hasn’t stopped punching at Trump since.

Where other governors such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer sought "common ground" or ingratiated themselves like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Pritzker drew pointed parallels in his State of the State address between the Trump administration and the rise of Nazi Germany.

"It took Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic," said Pritzker, who is of Jewish and Ukrainian descent. Some Republican lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest, calling the speech divisive and inflammatory. Pritzker rebuffed the accusation, saying that "I think it is important to talk about the destruction of a constitutional republic."

Pritzker’s chief of staff, Anne Caprara, recently reduced the current split in the Democratic Party to its simplest terms. The division, she said, is not among far left, progressive and moderate, but "between those who want to fight and those who want to cave."

Democratic voters are tired of capitulation. A recent CNN poll showed overall voter favorability for the Democratic Party has sunk to a record low of 29% — and most of that drop has come from Democrats themselves. Tellingly, the poll revealed that 57% of Democratic voters and independents want representatives who will fight the GOP agenda. Only 42% favored bipartisanship.

Pritzker, a top surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris last fall, has seen voters’ patience with the usual Democratic promises wear thin.

"If we want to regain the trust of the voters," he said last week at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., "Democrats have to deliver."

Pritzker’s record of achievement on that score is good. He delivered a $15 minimum wage in Illinois and has urged the federal government to do the same. He tackled the singularly unsexy task of building the state’s rainy day fund and improving its credit ratings. He launched a "Rebuild Illinois" campaign in 2024 that is the largest infrastructure investment in state history and created an employer mandate that allows every worker in the state to earn 40 hours of paid leave.

Pritzker also has gone after the real third rail in Illinois politics: corruption. In 2022, a University of Illinois at Chicago study ranked Illinois the second-most corrupt state in the country. Four of the last 11 governors have served time in prison. As recently as last month Mike Madigan, the former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives who ruled for more than three decades, was sentenced on multiple corruption charges. After Madigan was indicted in 2021, Pritzker pushed through and signed a package of anti-corruption bills and later called Madigan’s conviction "an important message to anyone in government or those thinking about public service, that if you choose corruption you will be found out and you will be punished." That moral clarity is refreshing — and is likely to become more striking as the Trump administration grinds on.

Pritzker is not without his weaknesses. The state unemployment rate of 5% exceeds the national average, while personal income growth lags the U.S. average. The state continues to lose residents. Pritzker has also had some policy flops. Just this month, a top-priority plan allowing community colleges to offer four-year degrees failed to clear a legislative deadline, even though Pritzker’s party controls the House and Senate.

Pritzker, who was reelected in 2022 with the highest vote total of any Democratic governor in 60 years, seems to be pondering a third term. That could be the clearest indicator yet of his intentions and, coupled with his personal wealth and willingness to self-fund, would give him a strong political perch from which to seek the presidency.

Voters sense that something is broken in both parties right now. Republicans under Trump seem willing to rip things apart, but with no plan for repair. Democrats have become so focused on process they seem to have forgotten the goal: making government work smoothly and efficiently, producing value easily seen by everyday Americans.

Pritzker seems to understand that. But Democrats still have a long road to travel before they settle on who can best rebuild their party — and a nation that could be unrecognizable in four years.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy.