Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois is leading a new political group that plans to spend at least $20 million this fall to help Democrats in battleground races in the midterm elections.
The effort could help Mr. Pritzker, a prominent Trump critic and billionaire who is seeking a third term as Illinois governor, raise his national profile before a potential 2028 presidential bid.
The group, Ready for the Fight PAC, will soon run ads targeting Brandon Herrera, a hard-line Republican and YouTuber running in a red-leaning Texas border district, according to a news release. It will also target Representative Max Miller, a Republican from Ohio whose ex-wife accused him of domestic violence and child abuse. It will add other races to its list at a later date, a spokeswoman said.
“With everything we care about on the line, Democrats cannot retreat to a handful of battleground races,” a spokeswoman for the group, Jordan Abudayyeh, wrote in the news release on Tuesday. Mr. Pritzker is using millions of dollars from his personal fortune to fund the group, and also plans to raise money from other donors, Ms. Abudayyeh said.
Mr. Herrera’s district favored President Trump by 15 percentage points in 2024, but Democrats say that the Republican nominee’s history of incendiary comments will give them an opening. Mr. Trump won by 11 points in Mr. Miller’s district in the Cleveland suburbs two years ago, but nonpartisan analysts have shifted categorizations of the race from “likely Republican” to “tossup” to reflect the challenges he could face in overcoming the allegations of abuse, which he has denied.
The PAC is another step toward a national role for Mr. Pritzker, who was first elected in 2018 and has tried to turn his spot in the governor’s mansion into a bully pulpit to oppose Mr. Trump and his policies. Among his highest-profile showdowns with the president came last year, when Mr. Trump deployed hundreds of Texas National Guard troops to Chicago as part of his immigration crackdown. The Supreme Court blocked the deployment after Mr. Pritzker and his state’s attorney general opposed the move in court.
A billionaire whose family founded the Hyatt hotel chain, Mr. Pritzker has consistently deployed his personal fortune and political operation to aid Democratic causes. In 2023, he started a nonprofit group, Think Big America, to support abortion rights nationwide; the group has since begun promoting Mr. Pritzker’s broader political agenda, with a section on its website detailing his administration’s accomplishments.
Mr. Pritzker is widely seen as eyeing a presidential run in 2028. Several other potential contenders have started PACs to support midterm candidates, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky.
A video promoting Mr. Pritzker’s PAC features him encouraging his party to unite.
“If there’s a divide in the national Democratic Party that exists, it’s the one between ‘team fight’ and ‘team cave,’” Mr. Pritzker says in comments from a Democratic event in Illinois last month. “And you know what team I’m on? Team fight.”
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