Spotlighting his accomplishments and highlighting his pushback against President Donald Trump’s sweeping and controversial agenda, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Thursday launched his campaign for a third term as Illinois governor.
“I’m ready for the fight ahead,” the governor said, announcing his 2026 re-election bid in the blue state. Pritzker is a billionaire and a member of the Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain.
Pritzker said that “Illinois is standing at the center of the fight: the fight to make life more affordable, the fight to protect our freedoms, the fight for common sense.”
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Pritzker has become one of the Democratic Party’s most vocal Trump critics during the opening months of the president’s second tour in the White House.
Pointing to Trump and the Republicans who control Congress, Pritzker argued that “in Washington, all they’re offering is chaos and craziness. Their tariffs are hurting farmers and small businesses, stripping away health care from seniors and working families and proposing even bigger deficits than before, all to give big tax breaks to the wealthy.”
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“Donald Trump has made clear that he’ll stop at nothing to get his way,” the governor charged. “I’m not about to stand by and let him tear down all we’re building in Illinois.”
Pritzker, who started several of his own venture capital and investment startups before running for office, touted that “we don’t just talk about problems. In Illinois, we solve them.” In another jab at Trump, Pritzker said, “We know government ought to stand up for working families and be a force for good, not a weapon of revenge.”
In his video, the governor touted that during his two terms in office, “we’ve balanced seven straight budgets and got nine credit upgrades. We raised the minimum wage, capped the cost of insulin, banned assault weapons, protected abortion rights, and eliminated the state grocery tax, lowered prescription drug costs and added tens of thousands of jobs.”
However, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) does not see it that way.
“People are fleeing Illinois by the hundreds of thousands and Illinois families continue to suffer the consequences of JB Pritzker’s abject record of failure at home while he spends his time on a national vanity project trying to further his own political career,” RGA Rapid Response Director Kollin Crompton said in a statement to Fox News.
Crompton also charged that “opportunities for working Illinois families are in the garbage, criminal illegal immigrants are protected over law-abiding citizens, and Pritzker’s tax hikes are destroying family budgets.”
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Illinois, which is the nation’s sixth most populous state, does not have term limits for statewide officials. However, there has not been a three-term governor in the state in more than three decades, since GOP Gov. Jim Thompson won four terms as governor in the 1970s and 1980s.
Pritzker is seen as a potential contender for the Democrats’ 2028 presidential nomination – and the launch of his 2026 gubernatorial re-election campaign is not expected to derail him from potentially running for the White House.
He was a high-profile campaign surrogate in the 2024 cycle on behalf of former President Joe Biden, as well as former Vice President Kamala Harris after she replaced Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee last summer.
Those efforts brought Pritzker to Nevada, a general election battleground state and an early-voting Democratic presidential primary state, and New Hampshire, which for a century has held the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Additionally, Pritzker’s return to New Hampshire this spring to headline a major state Democratic Party fundraising dinner sparked more speculation about a possible 2028 presidential run.