Eye On Illinois: Pritzker’s push for 3rd term makes political, electoral sense

Gov. JB Pritzker is expected to make official today what most observers have long suspected: he’ll seek a third term in 2026.

The political calculations are fairly simple. Morning Consult reported Pritzker’s approval rating at plus-17 in 2025’s first quarter. He won a second term in 2022, capturing almost 55% of the vote, helping pace a Democratic sweep of statewide offices where the average victory margin was about 520,000.

We’ll leave speculation about Pritzker’s political ambitions, running mate and Republican opposition to other commentators in favor of focusing on established facts.

Pritzker already can make history by staying put, as no Democrat has fully completed two terms as Illinois’ chief executive since Augustus French, who served from December 1846 to January 1853 and could not run again under the term limits enacted in the 1848 state constitution. No incumbent has won a third term since Republican James Thompson did so in 1982 (he won a fourth in 1986).

My first column after the 2018 election highlighted a quote from Pritzker’s victory speech, which he offered as a response to charges of cynicism for launching his campaign in the fieldhouse of Chicago’s Grand Crossing Park, site of a disastrous 1853 train crash.

“I found a profound significance in Grand Crossing,” Pritzker said, “a reminder that we have no right to walk away from the broken places of our past with no thought about how to mend them for the future.”

A July 2021 column analyzing Pritzker’s first re-election campaign noted his first campaign ad played up his pandemic response and predicted the eventual touting of a minimum wage increase and legalization of sports betting and recreational marijuana, while also noting the crushing defeat of his 2020 ballot initiative to implement a graduated income tax.

In his 2023 State of the State and budget address, Pritzker barely said the word tax, instead leaning strongly into early childhood initiatives.

“But for all his ambition,” I wrote then, “Pritzker hasn’t fully detailed plans to correct lasting, systemic deficiencies within the Department of Childcare and Family Services and the Department of Human Services. While such issues long predate Pritzker’s tenure, unfixed problems will emphatically ballast any pride in the progressive or fiscal successes for which his administration seeks credit.”

We head into another election cycle with those conditions: Pritzker can proudly proclaim the eradication of a $17 billion bill backlog and a ballooning rainy day fund. Every budget seeks to draw more tax revenue from sports betting. Recreational marijuana is a license to print money while remaining a corporate culture falling far short of stated equity goals.

Pritzker so far remains skilled at taking credit for the state’s successes without paying a political price for its shortcomings.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.