Illinois first lady MK Pritzker, who typically shies away from the political spotlight, announced Wednesday she is contributing $500,000 to support Ohio Democratic governor candidate Amy Acton after the campaign of Acton’s Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, released a controversial video featuring her estranged mother.
The contributions, which have yet to appear on Ohio campaign finance disclosures, will include the maximum contribution of $16,615.67 to Acton’s campaign fund, with the remainder going to the Ohio Democratic Party, said Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for MK Pritzker. The midterm election is Nov. 3.
Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed to The Associated Press
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late Tuesday that it produced an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother calling her a liar, and that the Republican campaign planned to spend $4 million to promote it. Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody in 1978 after their stepfather was indicted on charges that he sexually assaulted Acton, the AP reported.“Bad men gain power when we refuse to stand up and fight,” MK Pritzker said in a statement. “Vivek Ramaswamy represents everything that is wrong with our politics today: Arrogance, cruelty, dishonesty and the belief that it’s acceptable to say and do anything for power. I refuse to sit quietly while men like Vivek Ramaswamy exploit a highly qualified woman’s pain for political gain. There comes a time when simply condemning someone’s actions isn’t enough — we have to put it all on the line to defeat these MAGA men.”
MK Pritzker was not available for an interview Wednesday, Abudayyeh said.
Gov. JB Pritzker, a billionaire Hyatt Hotels heir, has spent roughly $500 million on political contributions since the 1990s, about $440 million to his three campaigns for governor, but his wife has been more selective in her individual political giving, state and federal campaign records show.
Still, MK Pritzker has given almost $14.8 million to federal campaigns over the years, $8.6 million of which went to committees backing Hillary Clinton, federal records show. In Illinois, she has contributed about $446,000, nearly two-thirds of which went to the campaigns of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Gov. Pat Quinn, state records show. Her mother was a South Dakota state legislator, and her father was a Democratic pollster, U.S. Senate candidate and chief of staff to a South Dakota governor.
Gov. Pritzker hasn’t had any reported contributions to Acton’s campaign, but he has been active in Ohio in recent years. Individually and through his dark money political organization Think Big America, he poured $1 million into a successful 2023 effort to amend the state’s constitution to protect abortion rights. In 2024, he gave $250,000 to the Ohio Democratic Party, and his newly formed Ready for the Fight political action committee has reported spending roughly $1.5 million this year opposing Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller, who is running for reelection in the state’s 7th Congressional District.
Campaign finance records in Ohio show the governor’s cousin, Jennifer Pritzker, contributed $10,000 to Acton’s campaign in 2025, and in-law Susan Pritzker contributed $500 to Acton earlier this year.
The governor denounced the ad from Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire and former GOP presidential primary candidate, in a social media post on Tuesday.
“Dr. Amy Acton has overcome immense challenges to serve the state she loves,” the governor wrote of his party’s Ohio nominee, who was the state’s public health director. “Vivek Ramaswamy has reached a new low by launching these vile and false attacks against her.”
Some Republicans have criticized Ramaswamy’s campaign over the video. But Vice President JD Vance, who previously represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate, said Wednesday during a campaign stop in Cincinnati for a rally with Ramaswamy that he was “a little bit disgusted” by “Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.”