Gov. JB Pritzker spoke to reporters Thursday for the first time since Donald Trump’s victory, saying he expects to work with the next administration, but he issued a warning.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker said, referring to the minority and underserved communities of Illinois who remember the “chaos, retribution and disarray radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied.”
Pritzker, who served as a surrogate to Kamala Harris’ campaign, said his administration “was not unprepared” for a Trump win.
Pritzker said his administration has worked with the Democratic-led General Assembly to take “proactive steps” to shore up abortion rights and other laws that could draw scrutiny under a Trump White House. And he said Illinois would take action if the Trump administration were to circumvent government grants that were headed to Illinois. The governor said he’s had similar conversations with fellow Democratic governors around the country.
“We have like minds about protecting certain rights and making sure that we’re going to be able to withstand four years of a Donald Trump presidency and also the areas where we might work with the administration, whatever those may be,” he said.
Pritzker’s comments weren’t as inflammatory as they were on the campaign trail, when he was known to refer to Trump as racist, homophobic and xenophobic, but they were just as pointed.
The Illinois governor who is also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028 said Americans should be “focused on a peaceful transition of power, even if Donald Trump didn’t afford that to his successor.”
Pritzker told reporters it was too early to offer an explanation as to why Democrats failed to win over swing-state voters, including in neighboring Wisconsin, where thousands of Illinois Democrats canvassed over the past two months on behalf of Harris’ campaign.
“I haven’t seen anybody show up with an analysis of the data. There are a lot of people with opinions, and certainly Republicans are spouting off their opinions about what Democrats have done wrong in order to lose an election,” Pritzker said. “But the reality is, it’s going to take a little while, I think, before we have real answers.”
Illinois remained a blue state after the election, but Trump even made inroads here, including in the Democratic enclave of Chicago.