Rich fat cat JB Pritzker talks one game publicly. Meanwhile, he acts very differently in his private beliefs. In his private life, he makes it a point to hire non-union labor while courting unions in his campaign for Illinois Governor. In his private conversations, he grades African-Americans on a scale of offensiveness. And now in his race for governor, he courts the African-American community, surrounding himself with that community's so-called leaders to appeal to urban voters. And now, some of the handful of people of color working on Pritzker's campaign have filed suit, alleging racial discrimination in how they were treated by the campaign.
Any organization is only as good as the person at the the top. In this case, the Pritzker campaign workers – both current (and undoubtedly these current are really 'soon to be former') and former – describe the Pritzker campaign as "a cesspool of racial discrimination and harassment."
Really.
Not only were people of color – African-Americans and Latinos in the Pritzker campaign – denied the same benefits as white workers, but they also typically found themselves sent to the high-crime south and west sides of Chicago. Undoubtedly because Pritzker-logic deemed that blacks should work black neighborhoods for some reason.
"Contrary to the candidate's many public avowals, rather than working to meaningfully address discrimination, racism is perpetuated, condoned and ratified by the campaign," said the complaint, which made multiple references to J.B. Pritzker's comment regarding the "least offensive" black candidate in a 2008 wiretapped conversation with imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Did anyone *really* believe Pritzker's "many public avowals" that he was not really, deep down, a bigot in treating blacks like servants instead of equals and leaders? Anyone who grades black people on a scale of "offensiveness" cannot claim any sort of open-mindedness when it comes to race. Let's face it: JB uses minorities as servants. He doesn't treat them as equals or leaders.
Oh yeah, it gets better.
One staffer, a former campaign worker for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and a Florida gubernatorial campaign, traveled over 1,000 miles to work for Pritzker in Illinois and was "one of the few blacks not herded into POD 4," according to the suit. She was later informed by the campaign that she had been hired to meet a "black female organizer quota," it said. She was assigned to work in Peoria and stay with a family that was "friendly to the campaign."
However, when the Peoria Pritzker supporters found out the field organizer was black, they refused to let her stay with them.
Black female organizer quotas? Wow. Could the racism and racist discrimination in Pritzker's campaign go any deeper? Well, they probably could.
"As a result, she was forced to sleep in her car and at the campaign office," the suit said. Eventually Pritzker's director of field operations found her a hotel "in an unsafe part of town."
Mighty white of him or her to put her up in a fleabag hotel. In a campaign that's seen the most personal wealth plowed into it in the NATION's history.
From the Chicago Sun-Times. They don't get a link because they hide their story behind a paywall.
It’s now official.
Democrat J.B. Pritzker has pumped more of his own money into a campaign than any other self-financing candidate in U.S. history.
The Gold Coast billionaire’s $146.5 million has bought him a place in the record books, breezing past Republican Meg Whitman, who set the previous record in 2010, when the former eBay honcho churned $144 million of her own fortune into her losing battle against Democrat Jerry Brown.
The combined $234 million that Pritzker and Gov. Bruce Rauner have raised in their bitter battle falls short of the combined $280 million that Brown and Whitman ultimately spent.
Yes, that's more than Donald Trump poured into his race for President of the entire nation. Amazing how badly JB wants this job.
So Pritzker has already poured $145 million, plus who knows how many more tens of millions into his campaign and he can't afford a decent room for his campaign workers?
Could the racism and race discrimination go even deeper? Glad you asked.
Some of the other allegations in the suit:
- Field organizers were assigned racist tasks like "go round up 40 black guys."
- Using "crass and racially discriminatory language."
- Attempting to "intimidate and harangue" black and Latino organizers for asserting their constitutional rights.
- Campaign officials placed personnel in positions for which they were unqualified "solely to act as overseers and stifle the complaints" of minorities.
And this guy is up 15 points in polling data?
On his campaign pledging to double Illinois state taxes? To enact gun bans and gun control? To welcome illegal aliens to Illinois?
What are people thinking?
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