Moments after being hailed by his lieutenant governor as a “champion for all women,” Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker declined Friday to offer an opinion on House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s leadership or whether Welch’s public responses have adequately addressed his handling of sexual harassment complaints against former state Rep. Harry Benton.
Instead, the Democratic governor called for the Illinois House to move “very quickly” on new procedures for handling such complaints.
Pritzker made the comments at an unrelated news conference, where — alongside Juliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor and now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate — he signed legislation expanding women’s health protections and protections for domestic violence victims.
Welch created a House Democratic working group on “Workplace Culture and Accountability” in response to the Benton fallout. Pritzker said the group should act quickly despite the caution expressed by Welch’s chief of staff, Clayton Harris III, that the group “will take the time necessary” and that its “goal is not to respond to a news cycle or rush through recommendations for the sake of producing a report.”
“There is no time here. There are already models for dealing with this in our states. I believe that there doesn’t need to be much of a discussion through a working group,” Pritzker said. “It is important, in my opinion, for this to happen very quickly because there’s no reason for this (not) to be. We’re not reinventing the wheel here. The nation has figured out how to allow someone to come forward and make sure they get justice when they’ve been harassed.”
Pritzker’s remarks follow a media outreach tour by Welch to selected outlets that notably excluded the Tribune, which revealed in a July 17 story that the speaker’s office knew about sexual harassment allegations against Benton three years ago after they were reported by a former Benton staffer. The speaker didn’t take disciplinary action against Benton until this year when a female lobbyist said she was harassed by him at a River North bar in January, the Tribune reported. A legislative inspector general’s report requested by Welch also found that a staffer for another legislator had separately complained of harassment by Benton.
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Critics, including some members of Welch’s House Democratic supermajority, have questioned why the speaker failed to act on the former Benton staffer’s 2023 complaints, went on to give Benton $1.4 million toward his reelection campaign, and then only acted this year after two additional women had been harassed. Benton resigned his House seat on July 3 and withdrew from the general election.
Welch has faulted the former Benton staffer for not following his office’s recommendation to file her complaints with the legislative inspector general’s office, and that after Benton denied the allegations, he determined it was a “he said/she said” situation and did not take action.
He has also told the House Democratic Women’s Caucus that he heavily funded Benton’s reelection campaign despite knowing of the harassment claims because Benton, a former ironworker from Plainfield, could have undermined organized labor’s support for Welch had he spoken out against the speaker. Union officials and House Democrats close to labor dismissed Welch’s claim, contending Benton had no real influence over organized labor’s decisions.
Welch also said Benton was entitled to “due process” — even as the speaker has used his power to discipline other Democratic members he’s clashed with, stripping them of their caucus membership, committee assignments and staff resources.
Asked to assess Welch’s answers to the media outlets he did speak with, Pritzker said it “feels like there were a lot of different things said. Not necessarily in competition with one another, but lots of different things in different interviews.” Unlike the Tribune, none of those outlets interviewed Benton’s accusers, leaving Welch to present a largely one-sided account.
Pritzker, who is seeking reelection and is considered a potential 2028 White House contender, again demurred on a direct question about his opinion of Welch’s leadership by saying it was up to the members of the House to decide on who serves as speaker.
“The members are, in fact, I believe, holding the speaker responsible. That is, for responding to their questions and making sure that he comes up with an appropriate process and one that actually works for someone to get justice when they work for the 118 members of the House of Representatives and they are harassed,” the two-term Democratic governor said.
“It seems like other states have figured this out, but not the House of Representatives in the state of Illinois,” he said.