Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has spent nearly $39 million so far this election cycle to support fellow Democrats and their causes beyond his own reelection, even though many out-of-state races he’s backing look like long shots. To see why, look at Texas.
The billionaire Democrat already had a long-running rivalry with Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott when Pritzker last year invited a contingent of Democratic state lawmakers to hide out in the Chicago suburbs to block, or at least delay, a GOP plan to redraw Texas’ congressional map to elect more Republicans.
At the time, it seemed like a desperate ploy by a delegation with few cards left to play. The idea that Texas, long a bastion of conservatism, could elect Democrats seemed remote at best.
But on the eve of Tuesday’s midterms, Texas Democrats are increasingly hopeful they can win a statewide race for the first time since 1994. Three of the candidates with the best shot — including U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, Abbott’s general election opponent — were among the Democratic lawmakers who fled to Illinois last year. Pritzker has put his money behind all three.
He’s taking a similar approach in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, states that have drawn less attention than traditional battlegrounds. Those aren’t places where Democrats have typically done well, Pritzker acknowledges.
“But they are this time,” Pritzker told the Tribune in an interview at his Loop campaign headquarters about two weeks before Election Day.
“The field has expanded because (President) Donald Trump is so unpopular,” he explained. “So even in a Trump +10 district, we have candidates that are, in polling, running roughly even.”
Pritzker’s spending is drawing notice in political circles nationwide, both because he is one of the Democratic Party’s top donors and because he is widely expected to run for president in 2028.
Spreading his money around the country, as he has in previous election cycles, can help Pritzker build goodwill among activists in early primary states, mend frayed relations with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and stand out early in what could be a crowded Democratic presidential field.
“It does matter, in terms of being able to develop and build allies that could pay off later,” said Erin Covey, U.S. House editor at the Cook Political Report, a Washington-based elections forecasting and analysis firm. “It’s not like the average voter is going to know that Pritzker is behind the money. It’s more that if Pritzker has a better relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus, then maybe he gets more potential endorsements if he’s running for president in 2028. Or if one of the seats he invested in manages to flip, maybe they are more likely to support him in 2028.”
The money also lets Pritzker make inroads in conservative territory where the wealthy Chicagoan might not fare well stumping alongside candidates. Unlike former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who are known for courting Republican voters on the campaign trail, Pritzker is not perceived as a moderate, Covey said.
“Some of these candidates don’t want these big, national, more progressive surrogates on the trail with them, so it makes more sense (for Pritzker) to come in behind the scenes,” she said.
Illinois GOP Chairman Bob Grogan said Pritzker spreading “his largesse around the country” is hypocritical in an election year when Democratic campaign commercials seem to be focused on “tying every rich Republican donor to every evil.”
“But I guess when JB Pritzker does it, ‘There’s nothing to see here, keep moving,'” Grogan said.
Through Friday, Pritzker’s Ready for the Fight PAC had reported spending almost $13.3 million in a dozen congressional races, most recently wading into U.S. Senate contests in deep-red Mississippi and Kansas. Pritzker pledged $20 million to the group.
He’s also given about $3.4 million to PACs affiliated with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, and has contributed to the federal committees of state Democratic parties in North Carolina, Iowa, Minnesota and Georgia, among other federal candidates and PACs.
At the state level, he’s contributed roughly $9 million across 20 states since January 2025, with the largest sums going to committees in Wisconsin ($2.5 million), Texas ($1.4 million), Georgia ($1.1 million) and Ohio ($1 million). His pro-abortion rights dark money group, Think Big America, reported raising $5 million last year and has said he’s the sole contributor.
Five of the congressional districts where Pritzker’s PAC has run ads are in states among the first six to vote in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries. Those districts cover all or parts of Charleston, South Carolina; Manchester, New Hampshire; Las Cruces, New Mexico; suburban Detroit; and suburban Richmond, Virginia.
He already is active in the sixth, Nevada, where Think Big America has given $350,000 this year to an effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. It also is backing abortion-related ballot measures in Missouri and Virginia.
More Top Picks Best Heart Healthy Snack Boxes
At home, Pritzker appears to be cruising toward a third term in a rematch with GOP nominee Darren Bailey. But Pritzker isn’t leaving that to chance, contributing more than $90 million to his campaign and other Illinois Democrats — more than twice what he’s given outside of Illinois.
U.S. House in play
Pritzker has his hands in campaigns of all stripes this cycle, but the biggest battle is over control of the U.S. House.
Republicans control a slim majority in the chamber, and if Democrats flip a few seats, they would gain a hand in writing budgets, launching investigations and potentially even initiating impeachments of Trump administration officials.
Pritzker said that’s one reason he visited Texas in September while Republicans held a first-ever midterm national convention in Dallas.
“I care a great deal what happens in Texas. Voters everywhere in the country should care about what happens in Texas,” he told reporters.
“I absolutely could be in Illinois right now, but here’s what I think: It’s good for the people of Illinois if Democrats win across the country and the Congress becomes a Democratic Congress,” he said.
Pritzker primarily is getting involved in second-tier House races, but in a way that helps groups controlled by top congressional Democrats expand the map.
Ready for the Fight’s goal is “to go after districts and opportunities that heretofore seemed very difficult,” Pritzker told the Tribune. There are “some excellent candidates” with a realistic chance of winning who weren’t getting support from the national committees, he said.
“So my view was, ‘Well, let’s expand the field,’” he explained. “Maybe the next five, maybe the next 10 districts are ones that are worthy of focusing on.”
In many cases, Covey said, House Majority PAC, which supports Democratic candidates, reserved TV airtime early to lock in lower ad rates. As the campaign progressed, other groups, including Pritzker’s PAC and Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, took over those reservations. That way, they get the lower rates, and House Majority PAC can spend its money elsewhere. The dynamic works the other way, too: In several districts Pritzker’s PAC initially targeted, congressional Democrats added last-minute spending.
And in “reach” seats, Covey said, a relatively small amount of money can have a big impact. “It’s a smart move to invest in some of these House races, because $2 million could make the difference,” especially if Republicans haven’t taken the race seriously and the media market is cheap.
Pritzker’s PAC has run ads in the Little Rock, Arkansas, area, where U.S. Rep. French Hill, the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee, faces Democrat Chris Jones, who ran unsuccessfully for that state’s governor in 2022. Trump won the district by 15 percentage points in 2024, and the Cook Political Report rates this year’s House contest as “likely Republican.”
Pritzker’s group attacked Hill, a banker, over his support for Medicaid cuts and his opposition to raising the federal minimum wage.
In another long shot for Democrats, Pritzker is backing Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, a Memphis activist who drew national attention in 2023 when Republicans expelled him and another Black legislator from the state House for participating in a gun control protest. Pearson regained his seat in a special election shortly afterward, a campaign to which Pritzker gave $1,800.
This year’s congressional race gained outsized significance after Republicans used mid-decade redistricting in May to try to eliminate Tennessee’s sole Democratic congressional seat. Rather than keep a Memphis-based district to comply with the Voting Rights Act’s protections for minority representation, Republicans seized on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakening the landmark civil rights law and split Memphis among three new districts. Pearson is running in one of them.
Pritzker’s PAC has reported spending about $588,000 to support Pearson and almost $1.1 million to oppose Republican Brent Taylor.
Pritzker isn’t the only out-of-state Democrat interested in the race, said Brooke Shannon, a University of Memphis political science professor. U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania appeared at a July rally with Pearson.
“This investment not only raises the profile (of the race) and gets national attention, which is necessary for voters to keep the name in their mind, but it’s also really important for the candidates themselves and the volunteers that the campaigns are trying to pull over into becoming activists, for becoming volunteers or for becoming even just reliable Democratic voters,” Shannon said. “These investments do give a big boost for the campaigns in attention, in leadership development, in long-term investment in people, even if they don’t win the race.”
An olive branch
Ready for the Fight has spent $1.7 million attacking U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures’ Republican opponent in Alabama. In backing Black candidates such as Figures, Jones and Pearson, Pritzker also is shoring up his standing with a key constituency: The Congressional Black Caucus.
Pritzker alienated many caucus members this spring when he spent more than $10 million backing Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton over U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly in Illinois’ Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Both are Black women, but Kelly had strong support from her House colleagues given her dozen years on Capitol Hill.
And the CBC is a powerful group, particularly for any Democrat with national ambitions.
“They are a powerful racial bloc in Congress. They are an institution in and of itself. They’ve grown to 60-plus members. They represent a vast array of districts, not just minority-majority districts. They serve for long tenures. They’re having increased stature on their committees,” said Michael Strawbridge, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “They move as a unit. They are known for their cohesiveness.”
But the caucus is at a critical juncture. The Supreme Court decision scaling back the VRA — and subsequent redistricting efforts in Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee — threatens to reduce Black representation in Congress. At the same time, Black lawmakers’ clout could grow because Democrats will open their 2028 presidential primaries in South Carolina, where Black voters hold considerable sway.
Potential Democratic presidential candidates, including Pritzker, are trying to make inroads with Black lawmakers, although the financial support doesn’t guarantee they will back him down the road, Strawbridge said.
“It’s not just about showing an olive branch to them,” he said. “There’s also an aspect that this is a time to show your influence, to demonstrate that you can not only get yourself into office, but you can be the tide that raises other ships.”
Spreading the wealth
Pritzker’s team also has zeroed in on Republicans dogged by controversy.
His PAC has gone after U.S. Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, who faces domestic abuse allegations (which he denies) from his ex-wife, the daughter of a Republican U.S. senator from Ohio. It has attacked Brandon Herrera, a Republican House candidate in South Texas, for goose-stepping like Nazi soldiers, praising a German gun as “Hitler’s street sweeper” and for shooting at cutouts of kids shortly after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. And within 24 hours of Taylor, Pearson’s opponent, being caught in a sexting scandal, Pritzker’s PAC put up an ad highlighting it.
Pritzker and his wife also have used direct contributions to respond to mounting controversies. Last month, first lady MK Pritzker said she’d give $500,000 to support Amy Acton, Ohio’s Democratic candidate for governor, after Acton’s Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, released a controversial video featuring her estranged mother.
“We believe that when voters understand just how extreme some of these Republican candidates are, Democrats can win in districts that the conventional wisdom says are out of reach,” said Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for Pritzker’s political operation.
No state, though, has drawn Pritzker’s interest like Texas, where he often has feuded with Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term in an unexpectedly close race.
Abbott bused migrants from the border to Chicago, often without a clear destination or adequate clothing for harsh Illinois winters. He also sent Texas National Guard
More Top Picks Best Duffel Bags For Men Travel
troops to support the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz immigration crackdown last year, though courts blocked their deployment. The two governors have clashed over abortion access and transgender rights. They even have sniped at each other on social media.Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said the rivalry has helped both Pritzker and Texas Democrats.
“Supporting Texas Democrats lets Gov. Pritzker turn an interstate ideological rivalry into a more concrete electoral contest. Instead of just criticizing Texas and its policies from afar, he can help to finance efforts for Abbott’s opponent to win,” he said.
Pritzker is spending $1.2 million to support Hinojosa, Abbott’s Democratic opponent, a move that coincided with an early October announcement by the Democratic Governors Association that it, too, would give $1 million to her cash-strapped campaign.
He also has given more than $100,000 to support Talarico, the Democrats’ U.S. Senate nominee, mostly through the super PAC Lone Star Rising, and hosted a fundraiser for him.
Rottinghaus said Hinojosa is still unlikely to defeat Abbott, who has held together Texas’ fractious Republican Party, but that doesn’t mean Pritzker’s money will be wasted.
“The biggest impact is a validation effect. (Pritzker) can function as a political Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. He’s the one who can certify this is a real fight and it’s worth investing in,” Rottinghaus said. “This also makes the governor a potential first-mover rather than a latecomer. And in a state that doesn’t often get enormous amounts of outside funding, a million dollars can go pretty far.”
Pritzker’s help has reached down the ballot, too. In September, Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, a post that regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, posted a series of incendiary social media messages decrying the racial makeup of University of Texas students celebrating at a football game.
Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu, who had met Pritzker last year in Illinois, urged the Illinois governor to support French’s opponent.
“I suggested to him, ‘Jon Rosenthal is the only Jewish person running for statewide office (in Texas) and he’s running against one of the biggest bigots in America right now,’” Wu recalled, noting Pritzker is also Jewish. “He said, ‘Let me do something about that,’ and then he made a massive ($25,000) donation to Rosenthal. … I did not expect him to do that much.”
Wu said Pritzker never made the issue about Abbott in their conversations.
“I don’t think he cares about Abbott. I think he cares that Texas is a battleground state. I think he understands that a loss for the Republicans, a loss for Trump, in Texas is very meaningful,” Wu said. “If at some point we want to start playing offense and not defense, it would need to start in a place like Texas.”