Pritzker balances messaging as some Dems encourage party to avoid LGBTQ
issues
[April 23, 2025]
By Ben Szalinski
When Gov. JB Pritzker tells audiences how he became interested in
politics, it often starts with stories about his mother.
As a child growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Pritzker often
shares, he’d attend marches, rallies and protests with his mother in
support of abortion, women’s rights and LGBTQ issues. Those experiences,
Pritzker says, set the foundation for many of his progressive beliefs.
“I’m living proof that introducing your kids to the gay agenda might
result in them growing up to be governor,” Pritzker told a crowd at a
Human Rights Campaign event in Los Angeles in March.
Pritzker has made supporting LGBTQ rights a regular part of his platform
as governor, including speaking at dinner events for the HRC and
Equality Illinois in recent months. He’s set to speak to the New
Hampshire Democratic Party on Sunday – one of the first Democratic
presidential primary states.
But some Democrats, who are often named as possible 2028 Democratic
presidential candidates alongside Pritzker, think the party needs to
talk less about LGBTQ issues such as transgender athletes.
“We weren’t good on the kitchen table issues; we weren’t really good on
the family room — the only room we really did well on in the house was
the bathroom,” former ambassador to Japan and former Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emanuel said on a podcast with California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week.
“We not only look like we were on the cultural periphery, we look like
that’s what was front and center for us.”
Newsom, who is also a second term governor like Pritzker, ignited a
controversy among Democrats earlier this year when, in a separate
podcast interview with far-right activist Charlie Kirk, broke from his
party and voiced opposition to transgender women competing in women’s
sports.
“I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that
… It’s deeply unfair,” Newsom told Kirk.
Speaking in Newsom’s state last month at the HRC event, Pritzker avoided
criticizing the California governor, instead focusing on what he
describes as the Trump administration’s attack on individual rights. He
warned Trump’s executive actions targeting transgender people in the
military and in sports could one day lead to orders targeting marriage
licenses for same-sex couples.
The HRC dinner was another example of Pritzker introducing himself to
audiences outside Illinois, but he told reporters at a recent news
conference in Springfield that people shouldn’t draw conclusions about
his remarks.
“I gave a speech about what I believe,” Pritzker said. “It wasn’t aimed
at anybody. It wasn’t about creating a lane. These are things that I’ve
said here in the state of Illinois. I repeated them in another venue.
I’m perfectly happy about that. To the extent that people see it as a
lane, that’s their view.”
Pritzker’s views are mainstream in the Democrat Party, University of
Illinois Springfield political science professor Jason Pierceson said,
who specializes on the politics of gender and sexuality. He said it’s
Newsom and Emanuel who are trying to carve a more contrarian lane.
“I think it’s less that Pritzker is carving out a lane than about
embracing trans rights and LGBTQ rights,” he said in an interview.
While Pritzker has not joined Newsom and Emanuel’s calls to avoid
focusing on transgender issues, he has also suggested that Democrats
make economic issues their top priority.
[to top of second column]
|
Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a news conference at the Statehouse in
Springfield on April 8, 2025. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter
Hancock)
“Here’s where Democrats have to be honest with ourselves: Donald Trump
didn’t just ride into power on the backs of oligarchs who wanted tax
cuts so badly they were willing to throw a record stock market into the
toilet for them,” Pritzker said at an event last month at the Center for
American Progress in Washington, D.C. “No, a number of Americans, 49.8%,
went to the ballot box agreeing with Democrat positions on the issues
most important to their lives, and they picked the other guy.”
Gallup polling from September 2024 shows the economy was the top issue
for voters going into the election, with 52% calling it “extremely
important.” At the bottom of the 22 issues polled: transgender rights,
with 18% of voters calling it “extremely important” and 36% saying it
was “not important.”
“There’s a lot of intensity by activists, particularly on the right
against trans rights, but I’m not sure that translates into votes for
the median voter or the independent voter,” Pierceson said.
Pierceson said transgender rights get a lot of attention in campaigns,
but voters aren’t making final decisions based only on the issue. That
could mean Newsom and Emanuel are calling for an overcorrection to the
Democrat platform.
“There’s a tendency I think in the professional political class to
overestimate the conservatism of voters and to always argue that the
most conversative position will be the most politically potent and
powerful position,” Pierceson said.
Pritzker was confronted with polling data on LGBTQ issues during his
first FOX News interview as governor earlier this month. The March FOX
News poll showed 68% of respondents favor President Donald Trump’s
executive order attempting to ban transgender women from women’s sports,
and 54% support federal policy that recognizes only two genders.
Pritzker brushed aside the poll.
Asked by a reporter last week about his response on FOX News, Pritzker
said, “We’ve got to stand up for people’s civil rights. It is vile and
inhumane to go after the smallest minority and attack them as if it’s
something that is OK in this country.” But he pivoted back to Trump’s
tariff policy and said affordability issues “are the ones that affect
them in their homes every day.”
Pierceson said it’s too soon to know what the top issues in the next two
election cycles will be, but the economy will likely be one of them. He
also said rather than abandon LGBTQ issues in campaigns, Democrats
should reframe the issue of transgender rights, adding he doesn’t expect
most of the party to follow Newsom’s and Emanuel’s position.
“I think one of the things moving forward to think about is can
Democrats move away from the athletic issue to a broader narrative about
discrimination and maltreatment that maybe ties into some immigration
issues and other arbitrary decisions made by the Trump administration,”
Pierceson said.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |
