In Illinois politics, timing is everything.
Consider fall 2006. J.B. Pritzker was raising money to build a Holocaust museum in north suburban Chicago. Gov. Rod Blagojevich was raising money for his re-election campaign.
Each had what the other wanted.
On Oct. 27, Pritzker and his wife gave $100,000 in campaign contributions to Friends of Blagojevich.
Four days later — a week before the election — Blagojevich announced he was giving a $1 million state grant to support construction of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie. Pritzker was the museum’s chief fundraiser.
Asked Tuesday whether there was any connection between the $100,000 campaign contribution and the state grant, Pritzker said he didn’t “recall specifically” either the contribution or the grant.
“You know, I don’t know anything about that,” Pritzker said. “I’m very proud of the work that I’ve done on the Holocaust museum. You know, we worked for years starting in, really in 2000, to put together a campaign and then to get an architect and to make sure that we had community support. And, so, I’m very proud of all that work.”
Later, campaign spokeswoman Galia Slayen said there was no connection between the contribution and the grant. She said Pritzker’s foundation gave “over $12 million to the Illinois Holocaust Museum” and Pritzker “led fundraising efforts to raise tens of millions more.”
Now Pritzker is mounting his own bid for governor, a road that so far has been paved with high-level Democratic endorsements and nearly unlimited campaign funds. The 52-year-old Gold Coast billionaire has never held elected office, so his resume of civic engagement and philanthropy makes up much of the record on which he is running as he seeks the 2018 Democratic nomination against eight others.
Part of that record is his relationship with the now-imprisoned Blagojevich, whose name is synonymous with Illinois corruption. Many prominent Democrats took pains to distance themselves from the former governor while he was still in office. Pritzker, though, maintained a lower public profile during those years and stayed in touch with Blagojevich.
The campaign contribution and release of the state grant money is among the examples from Blagojevich’s tenure as governor that demonstrate the strong ties between the gregarious politician and the heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune.
In late May, the Tribune disclosed that the FBI had secretly recorded telephone conversations between the two men in late 2008 as part of an investigation into Blagojevich’s attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, who was headed for the the White House.
At the time, it was widely known the governor was under investigation for pay-to-play politics. The recordings captured Pritzker asking to be appointed state treasurer, joking about the failure of a Pritzker family-controlled bank that lost depositors’ money, and offering advice about what Blagojevich could get in return for the Senate seat appointment.
The recordings captured Blagojevich asking Pritzker for a $50,000 campaign donation. “I can’t, I mean, not while everything’s up in the air, but I hear ya,” Pritzker said during a Nov. 14, 2008, phone conversation.
FBI agents interviewed Pritzker during their investigation, but authorities did not call him as a witness at either of Blagojevich’s two trials. The government did not accuse Pritzker of any wrongdoing.
As Pritzker seeks to become Illinois’ chief executive, his campaign is touting his philanthropic efforts. In one video, Pritzker notes his work with nonprofits to provide school breakfast to 55,000 children “because kids can’t focus on an empty stomach.”
Pritzker’s leadership role in getting the Holocaust museum built has been one of his signature public achievements. During his April campaign kickoff speech, Pritzker talked about those efforts.
“It took us nine years — nine years — to build that museum. But today, Illinois has a world-class museum that teaches more than 50,000 kids each year to fight bigotry, hatred and intolerance,” he said.
The museum also is mentioned on his campaign’s biography page.
The project grew out of a controversy in the late 1970s when neo-Nazis attempted to organize a march in Skokie, which developed after World War II into an enclave for emigres who had survived the Holocaust in Europe. The march never occurred, but survivors formed a foundation and speakers bureau that opened a 5,000-square-foot museum in a storefront on Main Street.
Eventually, they envisioned a larger museum. Pritzker, whose great-grandfather emigrated from Ukraine in the late 19th century to escape anti-Semitism, became the chief fundraiser.
In June 2006, Blagojevich and other politicians attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the $45 million state-of-the-art facility.
That year, Blagojevich faced a rocky road as he campaigned for re-election. He was running amid a swirl of scandal over federal investigations into accusations of wrongdoing in hiring, contracting and political fundraising.
His Republican challenger, the late Judy Baar Topinka, frequently attacked Blagojevich’s ethics and the corruption in his administration.
