Politics

Pritzker helped a Black woman become senator. Some Black leaders are still mad at him.

Published

7 months ago

March 19, 2026

Congressional Black Caucus members, after a stinging loss in the Illinois Democratic Senate primary, are training their ire on Gov. JB Pritzker — and saying it’s on him to rehabilitate the relationship.

After Pritzker’s outsized financial support for Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton helped lift her to victory, lawmakers vented frustrations that his money unfairly tilted the race in her favor and away from their candidate, Rep. Robin Kelly, a CBC member who finished a distant third. And as Pritzker eyes a 2028 presidential bid, some members, cognizant that the path to winning the Democratic Party’s nomination will run through the caucus, signaled they won’t forget that he crossed them this round.

“He has to justify what he did,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “I’m sure at some point if he decides to run, he’ll have to come with that justification. As to whether or not it has merit or not, remains to be seen.”

Pritzker’s money helped put Stratton on the path to becoming just the sixth Black senator in U.S. history. But by boxing out Kelly, he frayed his relationship with the caucus, which holds significant sway over which candidates break through with Black voters — a large and powerful voting bloc the billionaire governor will need if he chooses to run for the White House.

“Keep in mind, the Democratic candidate for president that prevails has to go through [the CBC],” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). “The CBC is very strategic and so if there is an issue … we will lay out our framework for what it will take” to get our endorsement, she added.

Many top CBC officials are in no rush to make the first move to mend fences.

“We don’t need to reach out to the governor,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, adding that the group is focused on midterm races and delivering House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries the speaker’s gavel.

“Others are going to have to reach out to us,” he said of Pritzker. “Those conversations happen when those conversations happen.”

Pritzker’s political arm issued a statement in response saying he was “proud” to support Stratton, Illinois’ first Black lieutenant governor: “With only six black women having served in the U.S. Senate throughout its history, Gov. Pritzker supported his partner in governance because he’s worked side by side with her for almost a decade and knows she will deliver for the people of Illinois,” Jordan Abudayyeh, Pritzker’s spokesperson, said.

His team did not address questions about CBC members’ concerns, but did point to Rep. Jim Clyburn, the powerful South Carolina Democrat, saying ahead of the election that Pritzker was “free to support” anyone.

Clyburn on Wednesday told Blue Light News he would “expect” for Pritzker to support his No. 2 and that he was not focused on 2028.

Still, lawmakers’ veiled threats lay bare the difficulties Pritzker could face beyond Tuesday’s primary. And they underscore the duality the CBC is navigating as high-profile defeats of their members in Illinois and Texas raise questions about their political influence — even as they celebrate Stratton’s victory.

In interviews with more than a dozen CBC members on Wednesday, they made clear their irritation is not with Stratton, who many said will be welcomed into the caucus if she wins as expected in November. Their indignation rests solely with Pritzker, who they accused of playing kingmaker by pouring millions of dollars into propping up Stratton.

Tensions flared between the powerful legislative voting bloc and the billionaire governor in early March. CBC Chair Yvette Clarke lashed out at Pritzker, saying she was “beyond frustrated” with the governor for “tipping the scales” a nod to his funneling of $5 million from his super PAC to help catapult Stratton into contention with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who for much of the primary was leading in the polls and started with a massive cash advantage.

Many CBC members, and Clarke specifically, took Pritzker’s presence in the race as a snub to Kelly, who had a long-standing beef with Pritzker after he worked to oust her as chair of the Illinois Democratic Party in 2022. While both Kelly and Pritzker were said to have moved beyond it, the Senate campaign reopened old wounds.

Clarke issued a statement — some 12 hours after the Illinois Senate primary was called — to congratulate Stratton on her victory, calling it “a significant moment for Illinois and the nation that calls for unity” before pivoting to praise Kelly.

The CBC chair on Wednesday said she and Pritzker had not spoken.

“I’m sure there’ll be a moment where we’ll have a conversation,” Clarke said. When asked if she felt like she needed to initiate a conversation with the governor, she responded tersely. “No, I don’t.”

Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman elected to the body in U.S. history, endorsed Stratton in the race. She took issue with CBC members’ intense focus on the governor’s role in the process instead of the historic outcome, and said the group seemed more focused on backing its own than expanding Black representation.

“To weigh in on this race was just backwards,” she told Blue Light News. “[Kelly] was a member of the caucus and so it’s understandable on that level. But at the same time, Juliana deserved at least something from that group.”

Many current CBC members refrained from attacking Pritzker directly, however — another sign of the complex politics at play. Congressional Democrats want Pritzker’s billions to help bankroll their bid to retake control of the House and make Jeffries, the minority leader and New York Democrat, the first Black speaker. They’ve already been working him behind the scenes.

“I’ve already reached out to Governor Pritzker,” said Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), a former CBC chair. “I’ve talked to him this morning, in fact, and I’ll talk to him in the weeks and months to come, because I have one objective: to win this House, to help win the Senate, and to make sure we end the chaos that’s coming out of this administration.”

Others took pains to separate their evaluation of Pritzker’s role in propelling Stratton to victory from any campaign he may run in 2028, suggesting they were willing to reset the relationship.

“You will still have to show your bona fides, and you still will have to make your case as to why the CBC and Black people should take you into consideration. So we have reset it,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) said. “Good for him, for her, but that has no bearing on the 2028 race.”

Shia Kapos contributed to this report.

Politics

Trump is still the center of the GOP money universe

Published

7 hours ago

October 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump is still the center of the GOP money universe

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Politics

Trump’s fundraising dominance is masking a long-term problem for Republicans

Published

8 hours ago

October 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans’ small-dollar donor base has contracted in recent years, leaving the party more dependent on a tiny group of wealthy megadonors for support.

The GOP has had a cash advantage all year thanks to a relatively small group of large donors who have funded super PACs — Elon Musk alone has given nearly half a billion dollars this cycle. But the campaigns themselves have raised relatively little, and there’s one major reason: Other than President Donald Trump, who is still the party’s biggest fundraiser, Republicans still haven’t figured out how to raise money online.

New campaign finance filings reveal just how deep the problem goes. While Republicans have long struggled to grow their grassroots donor base, they’ve moved in the wrong direction in recent years. The number of federal donors giving through WinRed, the major GOP online fundraising platform, is down, with roughly 1.5 million donors so far this cycle compared to 2.2 million at this time in 2022. Meanwhile the number of donors has increased by about one third on ActBlue, from 4.9 million to roughly 6.6 million.

The contrast is stark: A single Democratic candidate, James Talarico in Texas, has had roughly the same number of donors on ActBlue this cycle as all Republican candidates and committees combined had on WinRed, according to a Blue Light News analysis of reports ActBlue and WinRed submitted to the Federal Election Commission.

Republican digital strategists who have been sounding the alarm for years say lagging donations are a product of fatigue, driven by years of urgent messages to the same set of potential donors.

“We beat the absolute hell out of low-dollar donors with texts and emails without expanding our [donor lists], and now no one pays attention,” said Wesley Donehue, a South Carolina-based GOP digital strategist.

Republicans’ online fundraising struggles have put their House and Senate candidates at a particular disadvantage, as candidates — unlike super PACs — face strict contribution limits and need a far larger pool of donors from which to raise money. Poor candidate fundraising has major campaign implications: Democrats’ cash advantage on that front has helped them run nearly as many ads as Republicans despite having less money overall, because candidates and parties get better rates than super PACs on broadcast TV.

Democrats’ grassroots fundraising strength is in part because of how decentralized the party is, with individual campaigns and groups building their own donor lists and fundraising operations. Virtually all of the the top Democratic fundraisers online this year are Senate candidates in competitive races.

But Republicans’ online fundraising, like so much of the party, is still centered around Trump and the official party committees. Unlike on the Democratic side, few individual Republicans have managed to break out.

Republicans’ fundraising troubles have left them more reliant on Trump: The president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., is among the biggest midterm spenders. The group and its affiliates have now spent $296 million — after facing pressure for much of the cycle from some in the GOP who wished it would have gotten involved sooner.

“Candidates are not investing the time and resources in programs that grow the donor lists and attract their supporters into the ecosystem. Instead, they just barrage previous donors with ongoing requests for donation,” said Eric Wilson, a longtime Republican digital strategist and executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. “Credit to the Trump team — they brought new people into the ecosystem, and those people continue to give to them.”

Trump has continued to fundraise since returning to the White House, including through his Never Surrender leadership PAC, which was formed out of his 2024 campaign committee, and two joint fundraising committees from his previous presidential runs.

Of the nearly 1.5 million donors who have given on WinRed this cycle, 324,000 of them — a bit over 22% — have given only to Trump’s groups through the platform but not any other candidate or committee, Blue Light News’s analysis found. Another 39% of WinRed donors have given to both Trump and another Republican.

Overall, that means about 3 in 5 WinRed donors this cycle have given to Trump, when he is neither on the ballot nor able to run for president again. That’s left non-Trump GOP donors in the clear minority just as the party begins to look for a new standard bearer ahead of 2028.

WinRed isn’t the only online GOP fundraising platform, but it is by far the largest and features all of the major party committees along with prominent House and Senate candidates across the map. Its FEC reports include only federal candidates and committees, not those in state-level races or nonprofits that use the platform.

Republicans once saw their online fundraising disadvantages as a matter of technology. ActBlue, which has been around since the 2000s, gave Democrats a major fundraising advantage in the late 2010s, at a time when Republicans had no similar centralized platform. WinRed, which launched in 2019, aimed to counter that. Now strategists say the GOP’s infrastructure has come a long way, but the party’s tactics still lag behind.

Democratic candidates eyeing higher office often maintain large fundraising operations, which they can use to raise money on behalf of candidates in battleground races while also building their own lists. Among the top 20 ActBlue fundraisers this cycle are former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s leadership PAC and Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-Ariz.) campaign committee. Kelly leveraged GOP attacks on his military service earlier this cycle to boost both his own fundraising and help Democrats across the map.

Wilson, the GOP strategist, credited out-of-cycle Democrats for building strong lists that they could use to shore up other candidates. The Republican side, he said, lacks similar coordination.

“Any time a Democrat announces they’re running for reelection, that week every Democrat in the Senate is sending a message to their list raising money for that person,” he said.

About the analysis: Donation totals and number of donors are based on ActBlue and WinRed receipts from all reports this cycle, covering Jan. 1, 2025, through Oct. 14, 2026. Donations that were later refunded are still included. Blue Light News’s analysis identifies unique donors based on matching full names and zip codes.

Politics

Blakeman’s bank statements don’t match his disclosure reports

Published

19 hours ago

October 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman's campaign finance disclosure reports contain numerous inaccuracies.

🚨🚨MUST READ🚨🚨: Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a group of fellow basketball enthusiasts have been secretly using the NYPD Police Academy’s gymnasium in Queens to play pickup ball, according to four people familiar with the games. The mayor and his crew typically show up around 10 or 11 p.m. and enter surreptitiously through a loading dock before hitting the court. While sports fanaticism has often buoyed the political brand of past mayors, Mamdani’s choice of venue is raising eyebrows. Read the story from POLITICO’s Graham Rayman, Chris Sommerfeldt and Joe Anuta here.

FINANCE FLAWS: Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman’s campaign finance disclosure reports have been plagued by inaccuracies since the spring. Copies of the campaign’s bank statements obtained by Blue Light News suggest his filings might have even more problems than previously suspected.

According to a disclosure report submitted to the state Board of Elections earlier this month, the Blakeman campaign had only $178,000 in the bank as of Sept. 28.

Yet the campaign’s checking account had a balance of $1.7 million on Sept. 28, according to TD Bank’s monthly statement.

The bank records also show dozens of transactions that are missing from his campaign finance filings.

On July 29, for example, the bank statements identified the campaign using a check with the number 1156 to make a $13,500 payment to an unspecified recipient. Yet Blakeman’s campaign finance reports do not identify any transactions that used check number 1156. It also hasn’t shown a single payment totaling $13,500 at any point over the past year.

In addition, there are instances in which the bank records show apparent contributions to the campaign that never show up in the disclosure reports. The statements show Blakeman was wired $18,000 by actress Lois Robbins on Sept. 2, for example, while the filings don’t show any transactions totaling $18,000 within two weeks of that date or any donations from Robbins. An $18,000 wire from attorney and campaign finance chair Howard Fensterman in July similarly doesn’t match anything in the disclosure reports.

Blakeman is the first gubernatorial candidate in state history to participate in the new matching funds program that lets him receive up to $3.5 million in public money. Then-Mayor Eric Adams was blocked from participating in a similar New York City program last year due to discrepancies between his bank statements and disclosure reports.

Reinvent Albany’s Kyle Kennedy said he didn’t know the cause of the discrepancies, but that it could just be due to “the timing of when things were recorded.”

But, he noted, Blakeman’s campaign “will automatically be audited by the Board of Elections after the election. … Campaign finance enforcement takes place after elections, not in real-time.”

Blakeman’s campaign didn’t respond to a request to explain the discrepancies. It has previously said its campaign finance problems are due to technical issues caused by a large number of donors.

Several of the candidate’s campaign finance disclosure reports have been repeatedly amended, often in ways that made the initial numbers wildly inaccurate. His July report showed him with $4.7 million in the bank; that was changed a week later to show his balance was $6.1 million; then in August it was changed to $4.3 million.

As Blue Light News reported earlier this month, Blakeman has received about $360,000 in donations over the contribution limit that he still needs to return. Many of the donations he has already returned have been highly unusual — one person who gave $1 in July was quickly refunded $780.76.

His campaign then said he accidentally submitted some duplicate contributions. Nearly a month later, it hasn’t amended the filing to show which transactions were real.

And as New York Focus reported, the Blakeman campaign submitted requests to receive matching funds for 2,600 donations that were ineligible for matches.

From the Capitol

Early voting turnout is surging all over the state.

THE WEEKEND TURNOUT: Early voting turnout has skyrocketed in every corner of the state, according to unofficial tallies provided by the state Board of Elections.

On the first two days of early voting in 2022, 261,735 people cast a ballot. This weekend, that number increased to 485,205 — a jump of roughly 85 percent.

The biggest increases were in the North Country — particularly in the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Elise Stefanik, which is now a battleground district for the first time in over a decade. Washington County’s weekend turnout was up 236 percent from four years ago. Early voting increased 196 percent in St. Lawrence County, 182 percent in Warren County, and 179 percent in Herkimer County.

The smallest gains were in the Hudson Valley. That was especially true in the district held by Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, where early turnout was the highest in the state four years ago as Ryan won his first full term in a nail-biter. His race isn’t widely viewed as competitive this year, and the smallest increase among the state’s 62 counties was in Ulster, which was up only 41 percent relative to 2022.

There were also relatively middling gains in Erie County (up 60 percent) and Nassau County (up 64 percent). Those are the places where New York’s two gubernatorial candidates live, perhaps indicating that neither is yet the beneficiary of any outpourings of hometown pride. — Bill Mahoney

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Rep. Mike Lawler campaigned from behind a McDonald's window in Haverstraw.

ORDER’S UP: Republican Rep. Mike Lawler spent part of this afternoon working at McDonald’s in Haverstraw – a potential backup job “if things don’t work out in November,” he said while putting on his uniform. Lawler is in the final campaign stretch in one of the country’s most closely watched congressional battlegrounds against Democrat Cait Conley.

The lawmaker spent his McDonald’s shift cooking food, handing out orders and speaking with constituents – one of whom openly admitted to voting against him before taking their food and driving off. Aside from that one outlier, customers gave Lawler a warm reception at the drive-thru window. The visit was seemingly part of an effort to make inroads in Haverstraw, a town that leans Democratic.

Lawler told Blue Light News he’s feeling confident going into the final days of his campaign, but insisted that he is an underdog in the Hudson Valley district. In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris and Lawler each won the district.

“I feel very good about where we are heading on Election Day. Eight days from now, we’re going to win because I’ve done the work,” Lawler said in an interview. “I’ve delivered for my district, and the people here know me. I’m from here; I’ve lived here my whole life, I know the community..”

And for those wondering about Lawler’s go-to McDonald’s order: double quarter-pounder with cheese, a Coke and a four-piece McNugget. — Katelyn Cordero

STUMPING SPRINT: Fresh off a weekend of enthusiastic campaigning for Gov. Kathy Hochul, the mayor addressed reporters at a press conference this morning.

He stuck to his rhetoric touting the governor as a champion for affordable child care and lampooning her GOP foe Bruce Blakeman as a Trump puppet.

The mayor was also pressed about whether he expects something in return for all the campaigning he’s been doing for Hochul — such as increased taxes on the rich, a top goal for Mamdani and his democratic socialist allies in the state Legislature.

“I’m expecting a continuation of a positive and productive working relationship with the governor,” he said. “I’m excited for that relationship to continue. It’s been one that’s delivered for working class New Yorkers, and I’m confident it’s going to keep delivering.”

It’s far from an explicit commitment, but it suggests he’ll continue pushing Hochul for tax hikes should she win reelection — something City Council Speaker Julie Menin told POLITICO she would support to bankroll child care programs earlier this month.

Mamdani also repeatedly mentioned the importance of showing New Yorkers that a mayor and a governor can have a productive working relationship — an apparent dig at the storied feud between former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“New Yorkers across the five boroughs are excited about us finally working together, where they haven’t seen mayors and governors do that often in the past to be able to deliver on common sense things,” he said. — Molly Reinmann

FROM CITY HALL

Mamdani's chief of staff Elle Bisgaard-Church (center) laid out the administration's governing philosophy at a forum today.

GRAND PLANS: Mamdani’s chief of staff Elle Bisgaard-Church laid out the democratic socialist administration’s governing philosophy today — including its opposition to means-testing for government programs.

“We look especially to universal social programs, facilitating forms of collective ownership, supporting the growth of unions. In short, creating shared economic security and stability through material programs,” Bisgaard-Church said at an event on Mamdani’s affordability agenda hosted by the New York City Policy Forum, a left-leaning research and publishing network. “On the contrary, means-tested programs segregate and encumber people.”

She pointed to other periods in the city’s history that saw “rich public institutions that could compete with the private sector,” citing NYCHA, the MTA and CUNY. Public housing, in particular, has seen significant deterioration in recent decades amid federal disinvestment. Reversing that trajectory is one of the most pressing issues Mamdani faces as mayor.

“Today we are governed by rules of austerity and face a withered welfare regime, means-tested policies, decayed public sector, and weakened public institutions,” Bisgaard-Church continued. “These are the political realities our administration wants to overturn, and we know that tackling the crushing cost of living is again key to doing so.”

The event drew other top Mamdani officials including Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg, Economic Development Corporation Chair Lina Khan, and Consumer and Worker Protection Commissioner Sam Levine. — Janaki Chadha

IN OTHER NEWS

— HOMELESSNESS: Mamdani’s early efforts to address a ballooning homelessness problem in the city have largely failed, community leaders allege. (The Wall Street Journal)

— SUNNYSIDE YARD: Housing experts weighed in on the outlandishly high cost of Mamdani and Trump’s proposed development at Sunnyside Yard. (The City Reporter)

— BK DEMS: There are four state legislative seats Democrats are looking to flip in southern Brooklyn this midterm cycle, a fact that has largely been overshadowed by the party’s drama-packed leadership succession saga. (City & State)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.