Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker issued a warning to President-elect Donald Trump and his future administration on Thursday: “You come for my people, you come through me.”
Pritzker told reporters that he intends to protect the minority communities of Illinois that experienced the “chaos, retribution, and disarray [that] radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied it.”
“People have often said that I’m a happy warrior, and I’ve always taken seriously my role as a happy warrior on behalf of this state. Even today, when I’m struggling with many of the difficult questions this election poses, my optimism for the future remains undiminished,” Pritzker said.
“To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans: I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” he said. “You come for my people, you come through me.”
The billionaire, who has governed the state since 2019, said Illinois “will remain a place of stability and competent governance,” whether or not Trump’s new administration closely resembles his first.
Pritzker said his administration “was not unprepared” for Trump’s win and noted that his administration had worked with the general assembly to take “proactive steps” to protect access to abortion in the state.
He said he and other Democratic governors “have like minds about protecting certain rights and making sure that we’re going to be able to withstand four years of a Donald Trump presidency and also the areas where we might work with the administration, whatever those may be.”
During his time on the campaign trail as a surrogate for Kamala Harris, he regularly referred to Trump as racist, homophobic, and xenophobic.
He insisted it was still too early to say why Harris lost, particularly in key swing states.
“I haven’t seen anybody show up with an analysis of the data. There are a lot of people with opinions, and certainly Republicans are spouting off their opinions about what Democrats have done wrong in order to lose an election,” Pritzker said. “But the reality is, it’s going to take a little while, I think, before we have real answers.”
But other Democrats suggested the party’s lurch to the left on social issues was at least partially to blame for the stinging loss.
Representative Tom Suozzi (D., N.Y.) said that Democrats who won on Tuesday did so by distancing themselves from the party’s radical positions on social issues.
“Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left. I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports,” Suozzi said, according to the New York Times. “Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”
And one of the most obvious answers to emerge so far has concerned the vice president’s underperformance among Latino voters. Early exit polling from CNN finds Harris with a margin of victory of just eight percentage points among Hispanic voters, compared with the 38-point advantage Hillary Clinton enjoyed from the same voting bloc in 2016 and 33-point lead notched by Joe Biden four years ago.
Trump was able to whittle down the gap thanks to support from Latino men. The president-elect, who won among Latino men by ten points according to CNN exit polling, is the first Republican candidate to do so in the time that exit polling has existed, according to the network’s Harry Enten.