Prairie State Wire

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has shown he is willing to go to great lengths to intimidate and muzzle those opposing him through all means of media. 

In recent weeks Pritzker has successfully shut down opposition media in several instances. As he has with other campaign TV radio and print campaigns, Pritzker has shown he will threaten any outlet choosing to run the ad through intimidation. In a Real Clear Politics piece titled “Pritzker Suffocates Free Speech” Steve Cortes addressed how Pritzker used his power to silence newspapers produced by LGIS, of which this journal is one, featuring articles critical of his and other Democrat public policies. 

“Concurrent with the suppression of the newspapers, the Pritzker campaign used infamous Democrat lawyer Marc Elias to pressure two Chicago TV stations, WGN and local NBC, to cancel anti-Pritzker PAC ads from airing,” Cortes wrote. “Welcome to America in the 2020s! A land where the White House can cancel your social media and a sitting governor can have your paper tossed and your TV ads refused. Such are the tactics of a person like Pritzker who deems himself lord of some realm rather than an elected servant leader. After all, this is the same disgraced politician who ordered some of the most draconian and unscientific lockdown edicts in America during the Spring of 2020, while sending his own family via private jet to luxuriate at their ultra-high end equestrian estate in Ron DeSantis’ open state of Florida. If the voters receive the full spectrum of information about Pritzker and choose to re-elect him, so be it. But this speech repression cannot stand.” 

State Rep. Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) penned a letter to the editor on the issue. 

“Does Paddock Publications really believe in First Amendment press and speech rights? Do they really want an informed electorate and robust debate?” Morrison wrote in North Cook News. “Up until recent distribution of LGIS papers, many Illinois residents were completely unaware of the implementation of and sweeping implications for Illinois’ controversial criminal justice law—the Safe-T Act. It goes into effect January 1—conveniently for incumbents who supported it, after this fall’s elections. JB’s mouthpiece says the papers are guilty of slander. How so? What in them is false? In fact, the Governor himself is guilty of disinformation about the Safe-T Act.”

Pritzker coerced Paddock Publications into discontinuing the printing of LGIS’s newspapers. Through a campaign spokesman, Pritzker announced his withdrawal from the organization's candidate forum and asked that the Daily Herald stop doing business with LGIS because its publications were too critical of his administration and “represent an existential threat to quality, independent journalism.”

Radio host Dan Proft noted the newspapers “will continue to be printed and distributed even if we have to return to the Gutenberg press.” Proft and Pritzker have been battling late in the campaign season. Pritzker's influence on the Daily Herald is simply the most recent instance of the governor using extraordinary power to silence critical voices during this election season. Pritzker was also successful in stopping a TV commercial for Proft's People Who Play By The Rules PAC that featured a woman screaming in agony during a strong arm robbery that took place in broad daylight in suburban Chicago. Additionally, Pritzker intimidated NBC and WGN into pulling a Beverly Miles campaign advertisement accusing Pritzker of terminating her for political reasons.