Ken Griffin Exposes Crack In Pritzker Campaign: Chicago Violence

CHICAGO — No matter what you think about the billionaire who has backed both Republicans and Rahm Emanuel, Ken Griffin's concerns that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has turned a blind eye to skyrocketing Chicago violence and pushed policies that value politics over people are valid.

The Citadel hedge fund boss, who recently said he's "all-in" for funding a challenger to upset Pritzker's re-election bid, asks a pretty simple question: What is the governor's plan to address the "spiral of death and violence and the mayhem in our streets?"

Pritzker clearly doesn't have one.

When the Sun-Times asked directly about Griffin's assertion that "the government’s most basic responsibility is to protect its citizens, and the Governor is failing Chicagoans," a Pritzker spokesperson "declined to respond."

Pritzker instead tried to deflect jabs from Illinois' richest man with talk of, you guessed it, partisan politics.

“This is the guy who brought you [former Gov.] Bruce Rauner,” Pritzker said of Griffin in an "exclusive" chat with his favorite political columnist at Crain's Chicago Business. “I don’t think the people want to do a redo and put his puppet in office."

Pritzker would rather friendly reporters write about state tax incentives for an electric truck manufacturer and the state's improved credit ratings, upgraded thanks to a pandemic-induced injection of federal cash.

Heck, the governor would prefer to talk about anything but the shootings, carjackings and murders that have metastasized from poor, predominantly minority communities and can no longer be easily avoided by Chicago's elite, including the two bickering billionaires.

In September, there was a carjacking outside the governor's Astor Street mansion — one of four in the Gold Coast that month. Downtown shootings are up 220 percent this year. Griffin says he counted 25 bullet holes in a window of a storefront where he lives, and someone “tried to carjack the security detail” outside his building. A data scientist riding a Divvy bike on his way to go sailing downtown was struck by gunfire as a rolling shootout approached the posh Fulton Market district.

Yet, only Griffin's comments got Pritzker's attention turned to violence.

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About five weeks ago, the Citadel boss announced that spiking violence in Chicago has him considering relocating his company, which manages $38 billion in assets, to New York City, where it is already consolidating space in a new office tower. Since then, nearly 400 people have been shot and wounded in Chicago, including more than 75 who were shot and killed.

The governor responded with pandering and a political smoke screen.

At a new conference that doubled as a campaign rally, Pritzker offered up an empty executive order declaring violence a public health crisis — and a promise of $200 million statewide for unidentified programs next year and 2023.

MORE ON PATCH: Pritzker Violence Executive Order Smells Like A Campaign Promise

Much of that pledge is so flimsy — dependent on Pritzker's re-election and winning legislative approval — that the governor didn't dare hold it up to defend himself against Griffin's very valid criticisms of the governor's notable absence in the fight against Chicago's shooting problem.

Instead, Pritzker arrogantly suggested to the Sun-Times that Griffin should put away his pocketbook and leave his re-election campaign alone.

The governor would rather not be held accountable for actively keeping his hands clean of the bloodshed that plagues Black and Latino neighborhoods in a Chicago, where he won 81 percent of the vote in 2018.

Pritzker says he has other, more important initiatives to push. He's "focused on delivering" for Illinoisans, he told the labor-union owned Sun-Times. He boasts of tax credits for a downstate electric truck manufacturer and efforts to get to the attention of world leaders interested in green energy and climate change.

If not for Griffin's willingness to gamble part of his person fortune, the hotel heir's self-funded campaign might not have to defend his do-nothing stance on violent crime in Chicago — the state's biggest economic engine — against an underfunded opponent.

While politicos wonder which Republican candidate the hedge-fund founder will throw his money behind, I've got a better idea for the financial backer of former Mayor Emanuel and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Shock everyone — round up a Democrat, who, unlike Pritzker, cares enough to make fighting Chicago' shooting problem a top priority for our state.

Make this battle of billionaires less about partisan politics, and more about people.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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