Shortly after wrapping up an inaugural legislative session in 2019 that included hiking the state’s minimum wage, legalizing cannabis and passing a historic $45 billion statewide construction program supported by expanded gambling and a host of increased taxes and fees, Gov. J.B. Pritzker sought to reassure a group of Chicago business leaders that he wasn’t just another tax-and-spend liberal.

Addressing the Executives’ Club of Chicago, Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune and a prominent tech investor, said he would pursue a “rational, pragmatic, progressive agenda” that ultimately would pay dividends for the state budget and Illinois’ economy.

“I’m a businessman. I’m a progressive. I’m a believer in growing the economy and lifting up people’s wages,” Pritzker said at the time.

Now in his second term and preparing to play host to this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, while also eyeing his own future White House run, Pritzker’s identity as a self-described “pragmatic progressive” is being put to the test. The state faces its most challenging budget outlook since the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the governor continues to grapple with controversies over his handling of criminal justice issues and leaders on both sides of the political divide say Pritzker’s approach sometimes falls short of fully addressing the state’s biggest problems.

The latest assessment of Pritzker’s strategy will undoubtedly play out in Springfield in the coming weeks.

With March primaries come and gone, work is underway in earnest on approving a state spending plan for the coming budget year before the General Assembly’s scheduled May 24 adjournment. The proposal Pritzker laid out in February attempted to build on past progressive successes — such as last year’s expansion of state-funded preschool programs — without overpromising and potentially jeopardizing the state’s hard-won credit upgrades, a core accomplishment the governor guards jealously.

It’s a balancing act that’s key to Pritzker’s political persona as he builds his national profile, and one that will hinge on the governor’s ability to satisfy Democratic lawmakers who want more money for their legislative priorities while not resorting to the kinds of budgetary gimmicks that created the state’s long-running fiscal instability.

“Obviously the governor and his administration carry forward sort of a number of elements of the core progressive banner in terms of policy and program, and that’s a part of an identity,” said Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan budget watchdog. “What is not usually coupled with that identity is fiscal responsibility. … This sort of fiscal responsibility is a kind of kryptonite against the narrative that would usually come from conservatives.”

‘Isn’t room for other spending’

While Pritzker promotes the “pragmatic progressive” agenda publicly, he also pushes it privately. In a February text to state Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth of Peoria, the top budget negotiator for the House Democrats, the governor noted that “almost all of the few new things” he was introducing in his budget plan were at “no cost (or very low cost).”

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