Prairie State Wire

Republican Congressional candidate James Marter recently said Gov. J.B. Pritzker's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic borders on being illegal.

“It was not only wrong for him to do what he did, I think it was illegal,” Marter told the Prairie State Wire. “He’s had little regard for the people and it’s only made the situation worse than it had to be.”

Marter said he’s not at all surprised by the findings of a new Brownstone Institute study that grades the governor’s mitigations as “worse than an F” and a “complete fail.”

The Brownstone study composed data from every state from March 2020 through April 2021, with researchers concluding “there’s a special place for governors that locked kids out of classrooms for a year and a half, ordered sick COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes, did not practice their own orders, shut down tens of thousands of businesses and still couldn’t beat the U.S. average in COVID-19 deaths or excess all-cause deaths.”

Now running in the 14th Congressional District (McHenry, Oswego, Sycamore), Marter argues the governor has never fully understood the needs of his community and he is hoping there will be a price to pay for that come election time.

“I believe in my county and congressional district you’re going to see pushback to government in these upcoming elections,” he said. “I believe you’re going to see people send the message we’re tired of the mandates and we’re tired of the mismanagement. The services the state is supposed to be providing aren’t there anymore, but the taxes are as high as ever.”

Marter said it says a lot about Pritzker’s leadership that even his wife and daughter have spent a great deal of the pandemic away from the state in Florida.

“That is quite telling,” he said. “It’s just more 'do as I say and not as I do.' It’s part of him being a tyrant. Many of these orders have nothing to do with health, but control and politics.”

The Prairie State Wire reported Theodora “Teddi” Pritzker spent New Year’s Eve in the Bahamas in a nightclub environment without a mask after her father urged residents to stay at home.

“Bottom-line, he’s not a practicing doctor and thus not licensed to dictate health actions to everyone else,” Marter said. “Again, the hypocrisy is amazing and I hope it’s a wake-up call to the voters of Illinois.”

Marter said he still has many questions about the overall effectiveness of masks when it comes to slowing the spread of the virus.

“I don’t think masks work,” he said. “If they did, why is the virus still spreading when you’ve got so many people complying with the mandate? Where is the science that tells us that masks work?” 

Marter said there is little doubt about where the people of his district stand under Pritzker’s leadership.

“They’re definitely worse off,” he said. “Just about every big decision he’s made has come back to hurt people.”