After third win, Gov. JB Pritzker calls on Dems in Congress to adopt ‘bold agenda’

JB Pritzker’s decisive victory over Republican Darren Bailey and Democrats gaining control of both chambers in Congress have set the stage for Illinois’ third-term chief executive to pursue a potential bid for the party’s White House nomination in 2028.

A day after voting on Tuesday sent a resounding blue wave across the country and through Illinois, Pritzker was already looking to expand from Springfield to Washington, releasing a 200-item playbook calling on Democrats in Congress to act with “urgency and conviction” on a “bold agenda.”

2026 Illinois Election Day results

Saying the Trump administration “has spit in the faces of working families,” Pritzker urged Democrats to immediately begin work to increase the federal minimum wage, provide universal healthcare and childcare, restore the federal Voting Rights Act, reverse Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts in nutrition and Medicaid, codify abortion rights into federal law and give Americans refunds from Trump tariffs struck down by the courts.

“We need the Congress to step up to the plate, and this is the day after a monumental election in which the American people have said that Congress must act. And so, we want to make sure that the Congress has an agenda, one that’s good for the people of Illinois. Now, if it’s good for other states, that’s great,” Pritzker said.

“The amount of destruction that’s been brought upon Illinois and upon states all across the United States has been unprecedented,” Pritzker, a vocal Trump critic, said at a news conference at the Columbus Park Refectory on Chicago’s Far West Side. He was joined by his lieutenant governor, U.S. Sen.-elect Juliana Stratton, and Tammy Duckworth, who’s soon to be Illinois’ senior U.S. senator.

“The American people have given (Congress) a clear mandate and an urgent responsibility to repair the damage,” Pritzker said. “The work of fulfilling that responsibility and fighting for a better future needs to begin immediately, not a year from now, not six months from now. I mean, right away.”

Pritzker said the playbook, developed by his staff and culled from federal program and policy changes implemented by the president and the GOP-led Congress, “isn’t about beating up Donald Trump.”

“I believe that it’s possible that this president, having received the mandate against his policies, might be willing to talk to Democrats about the agenda that they’re putting forward and be willing to make compromise or actually approve. I think there are things that he may agree with in this agenda,” the Democratic governor said.

He also chided other governors who he said “have been sort of cowed” by Trump and threats coming from him. “Maybe because the American people have spoken as they have, even in red states, that maybe those governors will work together to ask their senators, who might also be Republican, to do the right thing in Congress. So that’s what I’m hoping for.”

In laying out a proposal that gives Pritzker an opportunity to present his policy chops and an agenda to a national audience, the governor once again demurred about a prospective 2028 presidential bid as part of what will likely be a sizable field after the outcome of Tuesday’s voting.

“Everything, and I really mean everything, including the agenda that we put forward today, and everything that we’ve done over the last eight years, has really been about the people of Illnois,” he said. “Those are the things that’ll guide all the decisions I’ll make going forward.”

But Duckworth declared if Pritzker runs for president, “I will support him 110%” as she and other Democrats hoped to pick up support for their agenda from lame-duck Republicans who won’t be returning in January and are no longer threatened by Trump.

“We can put things in front of (Trump) and dare him to veto them,” said Duckworth, who will become the state’s senior U.S. senator when Dick Durbin retires in January. “I think he’s too much of a chicken s–t to veto a lot of this stuff and we’re going to hold him accountable.”

Pritzker’s policy agenda came a day after handily defeating Bailey, whose poorly funded rematch was unable to escape the forces behind his loss four years ago — his support for Trump and his conservative Christian views on social issues.

In addition to Bailey, Collin Corbett, a former Republican political operative, mounted an independent campaign.

With 91% of the estimated vote counted in the race, unofficial results showed Pritzker had 60%, Bailey had 37%, and Corbett had 3%.

With votes still to be counted, Pritzker appeared destined to greatly increase his near 13 percentage point victory over Bailey in 2022 and already had nearly 100,000 more votes than he finished with four years ago. Bailey was down about 300,000 votes from his 2022 finish in the unofficial count.

In his victory Tuesday, Pritzker captured the last GOP holdout in the collar counties, McHenry County, while also taking Rockford’s Winnebago County and Springfield’s Sangamon County, which he lost four years ago.

Helping to boost Pritzker’s win and demonstrating the rapid decline of Republicans in Illinois, a CNN voter profile of the state’s electorate — akin to exit polling of the past — showed Democrats comprised 41% of voters compared with 27% who were Republicans and 32% who identified as independents.

Among Illinois Republican voters, nearly 40% said they did not consider themselves followers of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and 10% of them voted for Pritzker. Bailey was backed by virtually all MAGA followers. Independent voters favored Pritzker 58% to 35%, the CNN voter profile found.

With Stratton’s win in the race for the U.S. Senate, Pritzker’s new running mate, Christian Mitchell, becomes the first Black man in state history to serve in the post.

Pritzker becomes the first Democratic governor ever elected to three terms. Republican Gov. Jim Thompson won a record four terms spanning 1977 to 1991. Pritzker’s victory represented the continued deterioration of the state’s Republican Party since the 1990s as a competitive political force in Illinois.

The voting also marked the third consecutive election loss for Bailey, a downstate farmer and former state lawmaker. His two unsuccessful bids for governor were sandwiched around a 2024 primary loss in his challenge to veteran GOP U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro.

“I have no regrets. We hit, we fought, we worked hard. You were by our side. There are no regrets,” Bailey told supporters in a small hotel ballroom in downstate Effingham. “The people are speaking, and it it just confounds us. Unfortunately, we look across the nation, and we see this happening all across the nation.”

US Senate race: Illinois voters choose Juliana Stratton as Dick Durbin’s successor, AP says

Bailey said the nationwide results favoring Democrats mean that “we have a fight ahead of us” to unite the nation.

“We’re going to have to have unity, but we’re going to have to fight for unity. We’re going to have to fight for unity across with people that don’t necessarily think as us,” he said without elaboration. “I thought we had a wonderful opportunity to do that, and I was willing to do that. I tried to to turn my message and to give them a seat at the table, but they chose something different.”

Bailey had sought to downplay his evangelical Christian beliefs on social issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights that had played a strong role in losing suburban support in 2022.

But in a Facebook post on Wednesday, Bailey wrote, “Jesus was King before the election, Jesus is King today, and Jesus will still be King tomorrow. An election doesn’t change that. A political victory or defeat doesn’t change that. Our hope has never been in a political party, a candidate, or an election. Our hope is in Jesus Christ.”

For Pritzker, who now has spent more than $400 million of his personal wealth on his three campaigns for governor — including more than $50 million in the current one — the strategy for his rematch against Bailey was largely to rerun his 2022 victory playbook.

Bailey’s initial bid for governor four years ago was backed by more than $50 million from Richard Uihlein, the founder of the Uline office supply company. But Bailey got only $6,900 from the billionaire conservative donor this time around, a reflection of softened financial support for his candidacy in a year when Republicans focused money on trying to salvage congressional contests nationwide amid voter anger over Trump policies.

Pritzker never acknowledged a potential presidential bid even as he boosted his national footprint by dispensing some of his $4.2 billion net worth — a Forbes estimate — with millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes across the country, while also traveling to speak at various state party functions influential in getting him name recognition.

Helping to give Pritzker a national platform was his unrelenting, vehement attacks on Trump, who he labeled a “racist, misogynist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant” president while the administration pressed Operation Midway Blitz, a deadly and chaotic street policy of deploying federal immigration enforcement agents into the Chicago area that began more than a year ago.

Trump was in many ways the centerpiece of Pritzker’s campaign. It was long on the two-term incumbent’s efforts to criticize the president and link him to Bailey — and also on touting his own actions to defend Illinois against administration policies regarding healthcare, voting rights and immigration — but short on offering a definitive third-term agenda.

Bailey had avidly courted and won Trump’s endorsement in 2022, but sought to publicly distance himself from the president four years later. Still, Trump endorsed his second bid for governor, and Bailey said he welcomed it. He even defended the administration’s immigrant enforcement efforts and blamed it on the state’s sanctuary policies.

And despite his agricultural background and the effects Trump’s tariff policies and his war against Iran have had on farm production and sales, Bailey defended the president’s actions as “short-term pain for a long-term gain.”

It was Trump who encouraged Bailey to make the race after a family tragedy almost ended it before it really began. A helicopter crash in Montana in October of last year killed his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. Another grandchild survived. In a letter of condolence, Trump urged Bailey to “continue to Fight! Fight! Fight! for your beloved state in honor of your beautiful family.”

In his second gubernatorial bid, Bailey sought to soften his view of Chicago, which he had derided as a “hellhole” in his first campaign. He lived in an apartment in the South Loop, though he declined to identify the owner, and vowed that he would spend more time in the city and suburbs in an effort to woo key suburban voters whom he had alienated four years ago. He also dispatched his running mate, Aaron Del Mar of Palatine, to act as a northern Illinois liaison for his campaign.

But besides apologizing over his previous attitude toward Chicago and filming some cringeworthy visits to city sights with Del Mar acting as a tour guide, Bailey continued to spend significant time in his downstate base to try to goose GOP turnout there, despite the overwhelming number of residents in the city and collar counties who decide the fate of statewide campaigns.

Pritzker ran a consistent set of commercials, including several adopting the 2022 theme he used against the Republican as being “too extreme” for Illinois.

Without significant ad funding, Bailey had virtually no presence on TV except for news interviews, relying mostly on social media videos to make his pitch.

But his messages were often mixed. Bailey vowed to suspend the state’s gas tax increase by executive order, though Illinois governors don’t have the power. He said he would make tollways free but acknowledged bondholders were still owed $7 billion and that the motor fuel tax would have to be tapped to pay for ongoing tollway repair and maintenance. He proposed a plan for a Chicago Bears stadium only to acknowledge it was just a “start” and said the team’s mascot was his favorite player.

Bailey sought to label Pritzker’s criticisms as a distraction from the Democratic governor’s own record. But Pritzker touted his experience in the office including bringing fiscal stability and upgraded credit ratings for state government, enacting a first-term increase in the state’s minimum wage, increasing education funding, and putting in place protections for women’s healthcare including enshrining a right to abortion in state law.

Chicago Tribune’s Rebecca Johnson and Michael Hawthorne contributed