Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has said he has “not decided” on whether to run for a third term in office, fueling rumors that he may be mulling a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
“I have not decided if I’m running for re-election,” Pritzker told NBC Chicago, looking ahead to the state’s 2026 gubernatorial race.
The governor has already raised eyebrows by skipping a pre-slating meeting with Cook County Democrats as preparations for the next campaign cycle get underway, dismissing speculation about his motives on the basis that he has missed out on the gathering before.
“When I did it in the past, it was when I was thinking about running the first time [in 2018],” he said.
Pressed on whether his absence might indicate a future bid for the presidency, Pritzker coyly conceded that it remains “a possibility.”
The governor, a member of the wealthy dynasty behind the Hyatt hotel chain and a former venture capitalist, was a prominent critic of President Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.
He also played a prominent role at last summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago and was floated as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris before she chose his Minnesota counterpart Tim Walz.
As Democrats continue to lick their wounds following November’s scarring election defeat and attempt to get to grips with the new Trump administration, the party has yet to unite around a single figure who might lead it into an uncertain post-Biden future.
Fellow state governors Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer have been widely seen as potential 2028 candidates and have made preliminary moves toward the center.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representing the progressive wing of the party, have meanwhile drawn crowds at public gatherings protesting Trump’s policies.
More unexpectedly, outspoken sports commentator Stephen A Smith has also emerged as a contender, even attracting the attention of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Conway appeared on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime on Monday and spoke of him in admiring terms while dismissing Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez as “boring.”
“Stephen A Smith is intriguing to me, because [Barack] Obama was an outsider. Donald Trump certainly was a political outsider,” she said.
“Electability, the lack of electability, is going to haunt Stephen A Smith, but it’s a gift to him, because the moment people say he can’t win, voters say, ‘I don’t care who can win. I care who can lead.’”
