Gov. JB Pritzker told the world during the World Economic Forum’s January meeting in Davos Switzerland that billionaire Ken Griffin and his company up and left because of sour grapes over an election Griffin effectively lost to Pritzker.
It’s a claim Pritzker has made often that the press hasn’t challenged. At least one columnist, Rich Miller, has repeated it. His Twitter post and headline said, “After apparent spectacular political failure, Ken Griffin takes ball, goes home to Florida.”
It’s not true, and was never credible. Griffin had made the decision to move to Miami long before anybody had a handle on the election results.
Griffin had supported Mayor Richard Irvin who lost the Republican primary on June 28, 2022 to Darren Bailey, who Pritzker supported as his preferred opponent for the general election. Griffin announced, on June 23 (when the election results had become apparent), that he and the headquarters of his company, Citadel, were moving.
But Citadel had already signed for its $363 million April acquisition of the land for its new headquarters back in April, so the decision to leave surely was made before then. The election results weren’t known when Citadel was making that decision.
In Bloomberg’s new interview with Griffin, he adds to that that he had already had his kids apply to new schools in Florida.
Pritzker also said at Davos that crime was coming down in Chicago, which is nonsense. This is getting old. Really old. Our Catalog of Deceit by Pritzker will need regular updates.
-Mark Glennon
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
So what if crime is coming down. If you have a fever of 106F and it comes down to 105F, yes it is down but it is still too high.
Trump says if you can’t stop ballot harvesting then the Republicans need to become the masters of it.
Darren Bailey is just another Jorge Santos. Taking home over 3 million dollars for losing an election, where does one sign up for that?
You couldn’t pay me $3,000,000 to run for Gov.
For a guy who always is complaining about the political decisons others in office mae and always has the “answers” to solving society’s numerous problems I think you’ve told us the extent of your commitment to any of it in personal terms. As the cowboy movies of eons ago used to say “you’re a yellow belly”: all talk, full of complaining bluster about almost literally every thing of a political nature and no personal-risk commitment to help solve any of it. “Talk is cheap.”
So he either has to run for governor or keep his mouth shut? Are you the dictator in your house?
The world needs more people who are active doers and less sitting on the sidelines enjoying their screaming at the doers who suffer their insults. I don’t see debtsor here at least as a doer. But, he’s a complainer deluxe.
LOL you have no idea what my personal-risk commitment has been..
Why is that? It’s because I can’t recall even one comment you’ve ever made here where you’ve told us how you’ve done something actively useful in the personal sense to mold the political process to your ways of thinking. Have you ever run for office? Have you ever spoken in a group setting where the goal of the group is political progress? Have you ever done anything at all in the form of personal effort to advance a cause or a candidate? I can’t say you haven’t, but again you’ve never given me a clue that you have any political… Read more »
Does keyboard warrior count?
Springfield and Washington.
While I appreciate DB fighting to reopen schools, he was an embarrassment and if we continue to run candidates like that, we will continue to get what we get.
So true Sand. Unfortunately, most GOP voters in Illinois don’t recognize the problem.
You don’t recognize the problem either. No Democrat is going to switch sides and both for Bailey. No Republican is going to not vote for Bailey. JB turned 700,000 Democrat general election voters who normally don’t show up for mid-terms into mid-term voters through mail-in voting and ballot harvesting and likely fraud.
Darren Bailey had a deep pool of 2,446,000 Trump voters in 2020 but only managed to get 1,7 of their votes. Because they are general election voters, and not mid-term voters.
Candidate quality DOES NOT MATTER ONE BIT ANY MORE.
Not everyone aligns with Republicans or Democrats. You keep pretending you can win elections by harvesting non-existent ballots without having to convince actual voters that they are better off voting for Republicans. You’re delusional but good luck with that strategy.
Independents delude themselves into thinking they are independent. They consistently vote for one party, or the other, and rarely cross over. Maybe there’s a mythical unicorn voter somewhere in IL, who leans conservative, but instead votes for progressive Democrats like JB and Sean Casten. They’re lying if they say “give me a moderate republican and I’ll vote for them instead of progressive democrat”. I’ve yet to meet that person.
I am working on a piece, hopefully next week, making the case that Illinoisans are in fact moderates, based on lots of polling data. Wirepoints is centrist. It’s not correct to call us even “conservative,” except in relation to the establishment officeholders and media. The term “right wing,” universally used by the left, is factually unsound. But you are right about getting people to vote that way. IMO, Trump and abortion worked so strongly in favor of Dems in recent elections that little else mattered.
Looking forward to reading it Mark. Bailey’s position on abortion was and is not considered moderate. There are plenty of people that are centrist or moderate that were turned off by the idea of candidate that didn’t even want to allow exceptions in case of rape or incest. I have met several suburban female voters that have voted in the past for Republicans but would not do it this time. These same women were upset by the school closures and pritzkers emergency orders but they were voting to send a message. Debtsor and other Republicans can ignore moderates at their… Read more »
Totally agree. As you know, we don’t take a position on abortion, though we do discuss the politics of it. No question that it severely hurt Republicans in elections.
Nationally Republicans had greater turnout than Democrats in 2022. Turnout for Republicans, at least for Bailey, was only down 26,000 votes compared to 2018. JB’s turnout was down iirc over 200,000 votes compared to 2018. Abortion did not hurt Republicans in IL. The IL Dem party has a machine that harvests general election voters into midterm voters. There’s 700,000 mailin ballot voters in IL. Assuming most of those are probably Democrat (at least that’s how they’re counted, LOL) that’s JB’s margin of win. I’ve read every punditry and post-mortem I can find. But the votes speak for themselves. R’s showed… Read more »
And they didn’t stay home because of Bailey. Trump was wildly popular among Republicans in IL with over 2.4 million votes. Republican voters stayed home because they don’t vote in mid-terms, primaries or local elections. Which is a huge problem no one wants to address.
It’s a bit painful for unborn too…
PFF, when did those several suburban female voters vote Republican. Romney? Yeah right. Thompson? Maybe. Judy Bar Topinka vs Blago? LOL And Bailey is totally a moderate on abortion. He said repeatedly, abortion is a settled matter in this state and he’s not going to try to attack it. It is JB has the extreme position on abortion, allowing abortion up to the moment of birth, for virtually any reason. The state is about to approve mobile abortion vans so they can do abortions on the road for women too lazy to go to the clinic. Few countries on earth… Read more »
A society that aggressively promotes abortion makes me shudder.
In Illinois abortion is celebrated with demonstrations and not considered the life-altering event it is (for both participants).
A more preemptive mature approach would save a lot of angst and regret.
Illinois promotes abortions, gambling, and drugs … all Illinois needs to do is legalize prostitution and IL can become the mecca for regrettable choices.
The ‘Land of Lincoln’ ain’t what it used to be.
My township was conservative when I moved here. It is now decidedly blue. We had wonderful schools when my oldest went through HS. As more and more families leave Chicago for my suburb (bringing their politics with them) I have witnessed a notable decline in curriculum with my youngest. This is directly related to the introduction of a far-left bend pushed by aggressive politically active progressives.
Many of my liberal friends are paying attention and willing to vote for a moderate conservative… so, we wait.
You’re deluding yourself if you believe that your liberal friends will vote for a moderate conservative. That hasn’t happened anywhere.
Your liberal friends would rather not vote at all than vote for a moderate conservative. There’s nowhere in the country that liberals have voted for moderate conservatives.
POOR Democrat turnout, and not swing voters, like in VA giving moderate conservative Gov. Youngkin the win, is why moderate conservatives win in blue or purple states.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/swing-voters-dont-explain-why-youngkin-won.html
You’re confusing liberal with progressive. There are still many liberal voters – they are not progressive.
My township was also conservative when I moved her and now it’s deep blue. Chicago families are only part of the problem. Underlying the problem is that conservative voters are leaving, and Chicago families are replacing them. That’s been the situation for decades. Most of my conservative extended family members have left IL for redder pastures. All that remain are the most liberal of them.
Well, that’s also true. We had a large turnover around 10 years ago of families who had been here many years whose kids graduated, and they moved out of Illinois.
STOP REPEATING BAD OPINIONS AND OTHER NONSENSE. 2022 DARREN BAILEY RECEIVED 26,500 VOTES FEWER THAN 2018 RAUNER, AND ONLY 76,000 VOTES THAN 2014 RAUNER. ONLY 76,000 VOTERS DEFECTED FROM THE IL REPUBLICAN PARTY BETWEEN 2014 AND 2022. BUT IN 2020, ALMOST 700,000 GENERAL ELECTION VOTERS SHOWED UP TO VOTE FOR TRUMP AND TRUMP HAD THE MOST VOTES FOR A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT EVER IN ILLINOIS. NO DEMOCRAT WILL EVER VOTE REPUBLICAN. DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO CONVINCE THEM. JB won in 2018 and 2022 because he turned 700,000 general election Democrat votes into Democrat mid-term votes. Sure, some of those votes were… Read more »
Is this Dan Proft?
“NO DEMOCRAT WILL EVER VOTE REPUBLICAN. DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO CONVINCE THEM.”
You are wrong… they are around me… waiting.
Sorry, got a little crazy with the caps. My point is that I believe it is a myth that liberals will vote for a moderate conservative. Sure, they say that, but modern elections rarely reflect this; and in places where moderate conservatives have won, it’s due not to swing voters – your liberal voting for a moderate conservative – but rather, low turnout. These liberals may be unhappy with the insanity in their own party but they’ll still vote staight ticket Democrat, or, just not vote at all. But they’re not going across the aisle to vote for Republicans. As… Read more »
I thought maybe irvin was the best shot at that crossover but the evidence from this last election showed this doesn’t happen any more. And the handful of Republican Gov.s in Blue states – there’s only two or three – are at serious risk of losing their re-election campaigns in this highly partisan, straight ticket environment.
Please know I agree about D getting the vote out. I do. It’s just that I see, and certainly it’s anecdotal, a change. The slow reopening of schools during COVID infuriated parents. Gaslighting those parents by calling them dangerous, etc. made them angrier (I’m not talking about conservative parents – I have many D friends, co-workers and acquaintances). It was only then those same people began to reframe what they were seeing all around them. There is an outsized number of kids that have become non-binary or transgender in our schools. There is a larger number of kids who are… Read more »
Most college kids identify overwhelmingly as liberal and progressive democrats. Maybe there is trend among white suburban students, especially cisgendered white males ‘red-pilled’, to be conservative. They mostly attend state schools as they’ve been effectively locked out of elite private universities. Places like Stanford only recently said that less than 10% of their 2026 class are white males (22% white, and only 46% male, meaning less than 10% overall are white males). https://facts.stanford.edu/academics/freshmen-class-profile/ Colleges are well over 50% women and the vast majority of those women identify as hard-core Democrat. And statistically, almost every minority in college is a democrat.… Read more »
Ken Griffen went to Florida because that is where all his employees wanted to be. The high crime was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Most everyone is much happier in Florida. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan says Florida is open for business and they are investing big time. Stupid Illinois is chasing away business.
Everyone keeps glossing over the fact that JB spent more on Darren Bailey than Rich Uihlein.
And yet Bailey performed about as well, give or take, as any other Republican gubernatorial candidate, other than Edgar, in my lifetime. JB won both elections because 700,000 extra voters – new voters that hadn’t voted before in any modern midterm election – had their straight ticket Democrat ballots counted in 2018 and 2022. That’s the reality of the situation that no one wants to address. Winning in 2026 (such a long ways away) means reducing Democrat turnout – which is nearly impossible now because of early voting, ballot harvesting; and #2 increasing Republican turnout by 800,000 votes in the… Read more »
Except Bailey turned off a lot of suburban moderates ,the ones that were needed to win. And we missed the opportunity to watch JB feel extremely uncomfortable running against Irvin.
That’s the common wisdom people repeat but the data doesn’t bear that out. Bailey had 1,739,095 votes in 2022. Rauner had 1,765,751 in 2018. Bailey had 26,656 fewer voters than Rauner. You could even go back to 2014, Rauner had 1,823,627 votes. Rauner beat Quinn in 2014 with only 84,562 more votes than Bailey received in 2022. The elephant in the room, that no one discusses (and PFF calls me a conspiracy theorist) is that 798,403 new Democrat voters showed up for JB Pritzker in 2018 that didn’t show up for Quinn in 2014. In political terms, this is unheard… Read more »
Thus, to the extent that Bailey turned off suburban moderates, 2/3rds of them still went to the polls and voted for JB in 2022, just as they showed up in 2018 and voted for JB….after ignoring every nearly midterm going back to 1976. The issues is JB’s ground game, harvesting and early voting. 18% of 2022’s votes were from MAIL IN BALLOTS. 18% of 4,104,629 ballots cast is…. 738,833 ballot, which is more than the 514,653 votes JB won by, and is roughly the same number of people who showed up to vote in 2018/2022 that DIDN’T show up to… Read more »
AND I DON’T SEE ANY EFFORT FROM IL REPUBLICANS TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. TRUMP HAD 2,446,891 votes in 2020. My goodness, if Republican Party could capture 50% of these general election voters (harvesting mail in ballots) that skip the mid-terms … that’s by calculation, 355,398 extra votes. Not enough to win the Gov’s race, but certainly enough to flip the suburban counties back to red; probably even win some of the suburban house races … Casten won only by 24,145 votes… those votes could have easily come from the 355,398 votes that could have been harvested or mailed in… Read more »
One step in finding who these extra voters were is to look at the voter rolls and purge the duplicate registration of apartment dwellers who no longer live at an address. When all voters listed get a mailing of a ballot, people vote two or three times without knowing it.
Yet, democrats resist every reasonable request to stop voter fraud and pass laws to make it easier.
The only explanation is that they cheat. They pass laws making it easier to cheat because THEY cheat. And when they get caught cheating (like the Dupage County Clerk), they get the partisan supreme court to rule in their favor and then they get a legislator to pass a law condoning your cheating.
These are serious, difficult institutional obstacles to overcome.
I would not say ‘difficult,’ I’d say impossible.
BINGO!
Awake Illinois is rocking the grassroots efforts! Check them out at http://www.awakeil.com
Does Pritzker know that he’s lying? Which would indicate corruption and poor morals. Or is he just plain stupid?
I guess Mark answered my question below. Which is yes he realizes it.
I’d go a step further from “pathological liar” and call him and others outright psychopaths.
They believe their lies about their opponents are justified because they truly believe their opponents are the worst people in the world. It’s more important to ‘control the narrative’ to defeat your opponent than it is to tell the truth. To some extent, they are psychopaths.
Unfortunately it works with the dumb voters in Illinois.
If you havent watched Griffen’s Bloomberg interview, bookmark it. It’s savage against the current Illinois political party. For quick hits, go to 19:00 and also 30:00 min sections.
Second, as for the daily political lies, I’ve been watching the Truth in Politics act. HB5850. I know this was meant to fight Dan Proft, but I can see how this will sting both ways.
Thank you for the time .
Rich Miller is a paid gossip for the Illinois democrat party, marauding as a journalist. Any time I see anything coming out of his Capital Tax website, my BS detectors immediately fire off. I guess I got under his skin, because I followed him around on Twitter pointing out his crap. He blocked me XD XD
He’s kind of gross. I used to like the blog, but he has shifted far left as have the commenters. I don’t look at comments anymore because it’s a lil scary people actually think those thoughts.
J.B. Pritzker lies with impunity. He is as much as a liar as Joe Biden is. (If anyone missed it, Biden said he was part of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s at his speech in Selma, Al) However, Biden spoke at Grand Dragon of the KKK Robert Byrd’s funeral and had nothing but praise and admiration for Byrd. Pritzker is the worst governor Illinois has ever had. He lies about the fiscal condition of the state and claims it was because of him when it was a federal bailout during COVID.
Biden, Trump, Pritzker are all pathological liars, along with many in the media. Nothing infuriates me more than how lying has become so routine.
I couldn’t agree more. And the media looks away…
The media amplifies their lies.
I agree 100%. It’s so difficult to even keep track of how much they lie and the extent of the lies. Pathological is the perfect word!
Exactly correct. So many outrageous things said and written that pass without scrutiny or remark.
Which makes the idea of JB for prez super scary to me. I’ve seen comments where people seem to think if you get him in front of non-IL media, he’ll get called out on his BS. I ask…”By who”? He can just say whatever he wants, and I think he unfortunately might be very appealing to blue staters on a national level. Terrifying…
Fat Boy lies again. Unlike Pinocchio his nose doesn’t grow longer, his waist size increases. It 60″ plus now and soon JB will be called Goodyear.
Jumbo Belly
“Are we being too mean to Republicans?”-a quote you’ve never read from any Democrat your entire life. Yet this is somehow a conversation the Right feels the need to have every single day. Bunch of eunuchs have no idea what we’re dealing with. @JesseKellyDC 3:15 PM · Mar 7, 2023
https://mobile.twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1633214695501856770
I seriously don’t even understand how the fat slob is living/breathing. I think I’ve spent more time in the last 5 minutes optimizing my health than he has his entire life!