Illinois' Democratic billionaire governor - who supported an Illinois law that attempted to block outside campaign donors from supporting Republican judicial candidates in his state - has again waded into the politics of his state's northern neighbor, donating at least half a million dollars, so far, to help Democrats hold their current majority on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court.
According to a Wisconsin state campaign finance records, Gov. JB Pritzker donated $500,000 to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin on Jan. 28. He is listed on the campaign finance report filed by the state Democrats as "Governor," using an address associated with The Pritzker Group, a venture capital firm in Chicago.
According to Forbes, Gov. Pritzker formerly helped to run The Pritzker Group until he became governor of Illinois. Forbes says Gov. Pritzker's brother, Anthony Pritzker, currently runs the firm.
From left: Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Brad Schimel and Susan Crawford
| Schimel for Justice; Crawford for WI
The firm's website prominently includes a photo featuring both Anthony and JB Pritzker.
The donation comes as Democrats seek to build a potentially massive campaign war chest to support the election of liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
On April 1, voters in Wisconsin will select a new state Supreme Court justice to replace retiring liberal State Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.
Crawford is facing conservative Republican Waukesha County Judge and former state attorney general Brad Schimel in the contest.
The hotly contested race is drawing intense interest both within the state and nationally, given that court's ability to shape the legal landscape in one of the country's most key swing states.
Current polling shows the race between Crawford and Schimel to be very close, with some differing polls showing small leads for either side.
In the last three presidential elections, Wisconsin has stood as one of America's most predictive battlegrounds, handing victories to President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024, while favoring former President Joe Biden in 2020.
Within the closely politically divided state, as its ideological composition has shifted in recent years, the state Supreme Court has also vacillated in its holdings on key political and social issues, notably including abortion, voting rights, ballot collection and counting rules, and labor laws.
Most recently, for instance, the court's liberal majority overturned a state appellate court's decision that a conservative group could have access to certain state voting records, as the group sought to verify that voters were legally casting ballots and state voter rolls were being properly maintained.
Currently, the state is awaiting a decision from the state high court over the constitutionality of its abortion ban law.
And last summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's liberal majority declared election authorities could again use ballot drop boxes to collect ballots in the 2024 election.
Republicans had sought to end the practice, asserting it facilitated vote fraud and could allow Democrats to steal close elections.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde had particularly criticized their use during the run-up to the 2024 fall general election. Hovde narrowly lost to incumbent U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who used late arriving ballots to eke out a win, even as Trump carried the state in the race for President.
In recent weeks, millions of dollars have flowed into both the Crawford campaign and the state Democratic Party from wealthy donors, both within and outside the state of Wisconsin.
Notable recent donations listed on Wisconsin campaign finance reports include $1 million from left-wing megadonor billionaire George Soros.
While a longtime donor to Democratic campaigns and candidates, Soros gained notoriety in recent years across the U.S. for supporting the campaigns of left-wing prosecutors, including former Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx and, in California, former Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and former Oakland District Attorney Pamela Price.
All of those progressive prosecutors have been blamed for fueling large increases in violent crime and property crime in their respective counties and cities thanks to allegedly soft on crime policies that critics say drive societal dysfunction and cost untold sums in lost economic opportunity, while making their communities more dangerous.
Other large donors to the state Democratic Party included California residents billionaire Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn who currently serves on Microsoft's corporate board; and Gloria Page, mother of Google co-founder Larry Page.
While the donations went to the state Democratic Party and not directly to Crawford, the state party appears to have served as a pass-through, as the state party quickly transferred more than $2 million to Crawford's campaign directly to help her in the run-up to the April 1 special election against Schimel.
At the same time, billionaire Elon Musk has also stepped into the contest, paying $670,000 to air campaign ads in support of Schimel.
Observers expect the race to become the most expensive state Supreme Court contest in American history, exceeding the massive spending on Wisconsin's last state Supreme Court contest in 2023, won by Democrat Janet Protasiewicz over Republican Daniel Kelly.
Prior to Protasiewicz's win, conservatives controlled the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Under their guidance, the state high court had proven to be a stumbling block for Democratic policy goals in the state and nationally, by extension.
Gov. Pritzker and other wealthy left-wing contributors also donated to support Protasiewicz at that time.
Pritzker notably donated $20,000 directly to Protasiewicz and $1 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, in an apparent bid to aid the Democratic effort to claim control of the Wisconsin high court in 2023.
Prtizker's support then and now comes despite his support for a law in his home state of Illinois that was written to effectively block Republican donors from wading into state Supreme Court races in Illinois.
Enacted in 2021, the Illinois law would have forbidden people and organizations from outside Illinois from donating to campaigns or specific kinds of political committees designed to support judicial candidates.
At the time it was enacted, critics said the law was intended specifically to block donations from big donors outside Illinois from donating to the campaigns of Republican state Supreme Court candidates, seeking election in two new state Supreme Court districts mainly in Chicago’s suburbs. By blocking such donations, critics said the law was essentially designed to allow Democrats to dominate the money race in those state high court races.
Ultimately, those elections were won by Democrats Elizabeth Rochford and Mary K. O’Brien, each of whom received millions of dollars in campaign donations from Pritzker, Illinois Democratic legislative leaders, and the state's powerful trial lawyers.
A federal judge ultimately declared the law unconstitutional for trampling the speech rights of Republicans.
Following the election of Rochford and O'Brien to their respective 10-year terms, Pritzker and his ally, Democratic Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, gave up on defending the law and did not appeal the decision declaring their law had violated the First Amendment.