West Cook News

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) made a veiled attack on Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas through a campaign spokesperson according to a HuffPost article published on Tuesday.

“Throughout the pandemic, Governor Pritzker spent every day fighting to save people’s lives and livelihoods,” Pritzker spokesperson Natalie Edelstein said. “He did it by following the advice of the nation’s best virologists and epidemiologists, many of whom are at Illinois’s world-class research institutions and hospitals. Leadership requires making tough choices and not pandering to the loudest voices driven by politics. The next mayor of Chicago may be called upon to lead in a similar type of emergency and residents deserve to know if their next Mayor will listen to experts or instead to right-wing talk show hosts when making decisions about people’s lives.”

Vallas' campaign responded through a statement provided to HuffPost.

“Paul Vallas looks forward to working with state leaders in tackling all the issues facing Chicago, from making the city safer to improving education to confronting crisis situations whenever they emerge,” Vallas spokesperson Phil Swibinski said in a statement. “As a lifelong Democrat, Paul respects Gov. Pritzker’s leadership and voted for him in the past election.”

Edelstein's comments appeared to be in reference to centrist Democrat Vallas' scrutinized habit of appearing on right-wing radio shows and professing traditionally conservative views. In December 2021, Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, appeared on a conservative radio show and argued that both Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot were heavily relying on executive orders to implement public health policy because it "gives them the ability to act like dictators" by working around their respective legislatures.

In other radio appearances, Vallas has suggested that certain left-wing approaches to teaching Black history create an "excuse for bad behavior" and heavily criticized Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He also spoke negatively of Pritzker in the same interview. In prior years, Vallas has lambasted many of Pritzker's policies, such as taking issue with an election-year tax cut that he labeled an attempt to "fool" voters, a reduction in a tax credit for low-income private school parents and his measured approach to reopening public schools and ending mask mandates throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vallas, a charter-school supporter endorsed by Chicago's main police union, is running against progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson in the April 4 mayoral runoff, for which Pritzker has officially remained neutral. Vallas has proposed filling the city's police backlog of over one thousand people and reviving community policing without raising any taxes.