Billionaire J.B. Pritzker will win the Democratic nomination for Illinois governor, CNN projects.
On the Republican side, incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner is still locked in a tight race with an insurgent challenger, state Rep. Jeanne Ives.
Pritzker outlasted and outspent his two leading challengers, businessman Chris Kennedy, son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, and State Sen. Daniel Biss, who made a play for progressive Democrats.
Pritzker poured about $70 million into the primary contest alone, while Kennedy put up about $2 million of his own cash. Biss narrowly leads Kennedy but neither, ultimately, could run with Pritzker, whose campaign overcame a series of high-profile setbacks while investing in an infrastructure for the coming general election contest.
“Tonight, we’ve taken the next step of beating Bruce Rauner and putting Illinois back on the side of working families,” Pritzker said in a statement soon after the contest was called.
But in a remarkable twist, Rauner, the incumbent GOP governor, has yet to clinch his own party’s nomination.
Despite giving $50 million to his own campaign in late 2016, Rauner, one of the country’s most unpopular governors, finds himself neck-and-neck with Ives, a right-winger who’s questioned his bona fides on social issues — even as Rauner dismissed her bid as the work of “fringe elements” — while appealing to disgruntled conservatives.
Her messaging, in particular one February ad that featured a male actor portraying a transgender woman seen thanking Rauner “for signing legislation that lets me use the girls bathroom,” was at times deeply offensive and led to a censure from the Illinois state Republican party chairman, who asked that she “pull down the ad and immediately apologize to the Illinoisans who were negatively portrayed in a cowardly attempt to stoke political division.”
The Republican Governors Association made no mention of Rauner in its statement responding to Pritzker’s projected victory, instead seeking to cast the Democrat, heir to the Hyatt hotel riches, as a tool of the Illinois political machine.