By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints
It would be comically hypocritical if weren’t so tragically destructive. Illinois governor JB Pritzker last week appointed himself co-chair of a new group to save democracy.
It’s called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, formed to counter the incoming Trump Administration and Republican Congress. “What we’re doing is pushing back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend upon,” Pritzker said of the effort. “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: No attempts to restrict the freedoms and opportunities of Illinoisans will be tolerated.”
No governor in memory in any state has thumbed his nose at democratic norms and constitutional rights more consistently and flagrantly than has Pritzker. Examples of how Pritzker earned his reputation as a “hard-left culture warrior who is happy to silence political opponents,” as the Wall Street Journal put it, are too numerous to fully list here, but consider a few:
- Through 43 consecutive, monthly emergency orders, he suspended ordinary government function and ruled by executive fiat, trampling on a list of constitutional rights, justified through censorship and suppression of opposing scientific views. Similarly, he issued 38 consecutive emergency orders enforcing his personal decisions about assistance and protection for illegal immigrants.
- He says he wants there to be a legal cause of action against anybody who says something false, which would be a flagrant violation of established First Amendment law.
- He has signed off on multiple policies and bills that violate constitutional rights to free speech, such as Illinois’ new law banning discussion of political or religious matters at company meetings, now being challenged in federal court. Another example is a Pritzker-signed law attempting to muzzle pro-lifers that was ridiculed by a federal court as “stupid” as well as unconstitutional, prompting Attorney General Kwame Raoul to give up trying to defend the law.
- He stood aside while his party’s operatives filed lawsuits to keep Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. off the ballot for the presidential election.
- He meddled in a Republican primary by contributing $24 million that was used, successfully, to achieve the nomination of who Pritzker thought would be a weak opponent, Darren Bailey, in his race for governor.
- Even the Democratically slanted Illinois courts couldn’t accept a law Pritzker signed earlier this year attempting to knock only Republican candidates off the ballot through a retroactive change in slating procedures. The Illinois Supreme Court in August upheld a lower court ruling that the law flatly violated the constitutional right to vote.
- Most importantly, nearly every major element of the policy agenda successfully implemented by Pritzker and his supermajority of allies in the General Assembly has no popular support. Thanks to the most gerrymandered election maps in the nation (which Pritzker signed off on in violation of campaign promises), Pritzker’s millions spent on elections and general mastery of the election process, we have an overwhelmingly undemocratic result.
Think about that last one. Poll after poll says Illinoisans want things like school choice, smaller budgets, lower taxes, biological men out of women’s sports, political indoctrination removed from classrooms and a balanced energy policy that includes fossil fuels and rejects the goal of 100% renewable energy. They want violent criminals prosecuted. They opposed the SAFE-T Act and don’t like gender transformation for minors. But Pritzker and his allies have delivered the opposite of all that. Illinois is a moderate state where corrupted democracy has somehow delivered radicalism.
Most relevant to Pritzker’s new effort, the public overwhelmingly opposes sanctuary and welcoming policies for illegal immigrants, which Pritzker intends to use as a centerpiece in “safeguarding democracy.” Even in Chicago, most voters want sanctuary policies ended and the border enforced. Yet Pritzker said, in response to the Republican election sweep, that if “they come for my people they come through me.”
Pritzker’s new campaign may lift his standing with the far left, but what will it mean for Illinois?
Billions of dollars in annual federal assistance and grants will now be at risk. Donald Trump is nothing if not vindictive and Republicans, who will control both houses of Congress, will be in no mood to help a governor who has called them fascists, among countless other things.
Less tangible but equally sad is the other effect of Pritzker’s campaign, which will be more hostility and division. Most of us long for a return to a normal level of collegiality and cooperation among lawmakers, but that’s obviously not in Pritzker’s agenda.
So far, Pritzker does not appear to be having much luck enlisting other progressive governors. Only Pritzker’s co-chair, Jared Polis of Colorado, appears to be a member. That surely says something.
Progressive governors who so far have expressly declined to join are Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs and Massachusetts’ Maura Healey, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has not yet indicated he will join the group. Maybe even they they know that a truly democratic process would not produce what Pritzker wants.
In a couple months, we will hear Pritzker’s plan to deal with projected budget deficits totaling $22 billion over the next five years. Chicago already faces a budget deficit of a billion dollars. Same for the school district for another billion. Transit authorities there face deficits totaling over $700 million. Expect no help from Washington.
