In our opinion, Gov. JB Pritzker is a fundamentally decent, moderate, perspicacious leader with the potential, even in this pending third term when voter fatigue typically sets in, to be a transformative governor of Illinois.
It’s further our opinion that cannot happen until his undeclared but self-evident campaign for president of the United States is done and dusted.
That’s not to argue that Pritzker does not have the right to pursue the highest office in the land or that he has no chance of winning. What kind of president he would be is an editorial for another day but, certainly, he would be a vast improvement over the shameless hustler currently occupying the Oval Office. And, of course, anyone who remembers the optimistic hoards streaming up Michigan Avenue after Barack Obama made his victory speech for president of the United States in Grant Park well knows the local benefits of a Chicagoan assuming the presidency. President Pritzker would be very good for our city; even for those who abhor the idea.
We’re not even complaining about the competing demands his dual campaigns — one declared, one undeclared — place on Pritzker’s time, even though the governor did not find time to speak to us while he made a last-minute decision to go out of state. For public consumption, that was in order to support fellow Democrats. But Illinoisans not born yesterday know the real reason.
No, our argument this day as Illinoisans ponder whether to vote for a third Pritzker term or go with his challenger Darren Bailey is something different.
It is to assert that the interests of the people of Illinois currently do not align with the interests of someone appealing to Democratic presidential primary voters, which requires a hard left turn. Especially when your polling is no doubt telling you that progressives and anti-capitalists will struggle to trust any billionaire, however seemingly benign.
It’s axiomatic that primary contests, dominated by the (now very online) true believers, require catering to the political extremes, then allowing the victorious candidate, in time-honored fashion, to tack back toward the center or center-left, which is where Pritzker actually has lived and lives. But in Pritzker’s case, we are seeing a drastic amount of over-compensation.
Illinois does not require a hard left turn in the governor’s mansion. It requires re-opening for business and growth and, not unrelatedly, it requires a leader getting a handle on the debilitating gap in our state between retirement benefits that have been promised to the state’s workers and the actual funding set aside to pay for them.
There are of course a whole variety of barriers to solving that problem, some structural, some constitutional, all intensely political. But that doesn’t change the necessity.
Poking at Trump, a favorite Pritzker sport, plays well with the Democratic base but comes at the cost of high-powered retribution, likely extending for two more years. The mayor of New York, who lives far to Pritzker’s left, has chosen to play a different hand with, so far, better local results.
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The governor also has to pay attention to the perceived public safety crisis in the state’s largest city; that cannot be solved by pretending the problem started and ended with the loathsome ICE incursions or that some liberal prosecutors did not drop the ball.
Chicago needs rebranding, especially on the international stage. And, yes, that’s also a governor’s job.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s Wednesday remarks at the Economic Club of Chicago were widely reported locally and he was of course mindful of his hosts. But we’d suggest the bigger lesson for the city lies in what Dimon said not at the Economic Club, but a few days earlier at the University of Michigan, when he did not have to be polite to his former hometown. In Ann Arbor, he was sharply critical about the business climate in Illinois and, at the same time, determined to highlight the critical role businesses have played in Detroit’s continued growth and revitalization. Dimon thinks businesses should engage in “catalytic philanthropy” in Detroit and Chicago, as do we.
Pritzker surely does, too. But he also worries altogether too much about selling that to a bunch of anti-capitalist primary voters.
To put some specific bones on this problem, we offer House Bill 3657, signed into law in July 2025 and colloquially known as the pension sweetener bill changing the final salary calculations and other machinations aimed at improving retirement benefits for Chicago firefighters and first responders hired under the so-called “Tier 2” state pension scheme. The signing of that bill, surely Pritzker’s biggest mistake of that year and arguably of his second term, added some $11.1 billion to Chicago’s retirement debt, according to the city. The city could not and cannot afford it, as Pritzker surely knew.
When questioned, he generally has asserted that the mayor did not personally call him or ask for a veto as the legislation was moving through the legislature (although Brandon Johnson’s administration has disputed some of that characterization). To our mind, that issue is moot. Is Chicago not in Illinois? Isn’t improving the fiscal health of Chicago, or at least not worsening it, also the job of the governor? Chicagoans expect Pritzker to defend us from profligate mayoral borrowing and spending, not add to it. Moreover, he knows we do.
Is this all enough, then, to cast voters into the arms of Darren Bailey, a conservative downstate farmer with a history of pitting Chicago against the rest of the state? Or maybe those of Collin Corbett, a very smart policy wonk whose fascinating and often simpatico meeting with us gave us much fodder for future editorials and made us wish he were running for the Illinois House or Senate in a race he had a chance of winning. Springfield could use people with practical centrist ideas like Corbett, even if governor looks like a bridge too far.
Obviously, there is an experience deficit between Pritzker and his rivals, although unlike the previous governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, Bailey has served in the legislature. Obviously, Bailey’s pro-life positions (with which we long have disagreed) and unapologetic adherence to what one might reasonably summarize as traditional, family, Midwestern values will be a dealbreaker for many swing voters, especially women. For others, a Trump endorsement, even though Bailey told us it was unsolicited and came as a surprise, will have the same effect.
But we’ve had three meetings with Bailey, who’s now running for a second time against Pritzker. At the fire-and-brimstone first, we wondered if he knew he was talking to a Chicago newspaper. But at the last two, we found him a changed and more compassionate man determined to mend fences in Northern Illinois, which we respected. He may be a downstate conservative but he is smart and quite different from the rigid, cro-magnum stereotype depicted in Pritzker campaign ads.
Bailey emphasized to us his commitment to improving the state’s schools. He said he would tackle the affordability crisis by temporarily suspending and then rolling back the gas tax (which would of course leave a large revenue hole) and rolling back the new tollway increases (ditto, albeit in the world of transit). He also promised a rigorous focus on improving public safety as part of his trifecta of priorities.
We found Bailey open to supporting a pathway to citizenship for undocumented Illinoisans of long-term standing. He said he saw the inherent inequity of cash bail. He insisted he would work across the aisle as he had done in the past. His approach to the ICE overreach, he said, would have been to pick up the phone to the White House and negotiate.
So voters have a pretty stark choice to make although we find both candidates to be honorable men who care about their state.
As per the policy of the Tribune Publishing Board of Directors, we are not endorsing in this race.
Just to be clear: The race we are talking about here is governor of Illinois.
Read all of the Tribune Editorial Board’s endorsements for the 2026 Illinois general election here.
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