Pritzker Campaign's Focus On Abortion Is A Re-Election Red Herring

CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker seems to relish his self-appointed role as abortion-rights protector of the Midwest.

As soon as word leaked that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to reverse the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, Pritzker summoned national reporters to spread the news: Pregnant women and girls from any state can count on Illinois' governor for access to abortions.

On Monday, though, not a single news outlet showed up at Pritzker's only on-the-record news conference of the day to ask him questions about his leadership on the abortion front.

Instead, the usual scrum of political reporters flocked to Aurora. That's where the mayor of Illinois' second-largest city and Republican gubernatorial candidate had his first news conference in a month.

Reporters predictably asked Richard Irvin the same questions that the Pritzker-funded Democratic Governors Association has been clamoring for them to do in news releases: What is Irvin's opinion on abortion laws? Did Irvin — whom they call "Silent Richard" — vote for Donald Trump?

Stories from the news conference focused on Irvin's unwillingness to answer those questions, at least not to the satisfaction of the press corps covering state politics.

"I’m not going to fall into the trap of J.B. Pritzker talking about what he thinks we should be talking about in this campaign. We should be talking about his failures as governor," Irvin told the pack of reporters.

Personally, I believe women should have a right to make medical decisions about their bodies without government interference. That's the law of the land in Illinois. The looming Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, if it is made official, won't change that.

Still, Pritzker keeps clamoring for news media attention on the topic of reproductive rights as a top campaign issue.

"We have a pro-choice majority in this nation and this state. We need people to go out and exercise the right to vote, to vote in people who will stand for their constitutional rights" to have abortions, the governor said at a Wednesday news conference.

All the grandstanding, made me wonder if Pritzker's stance on abortion really is the election-defining issue for Illinois voters that the governor's re-election campaign — and the reporters who cover it — have made it out to be.

Especially, given our state's other immediate troubles: violent crime, widespread political corruption and our post-pandemic economic recovery, among other things that Illinoisans are concerned about.

So I asked Patch readers for their input via an online opinion poll.

Nearly 4 in 10 of nearly 2,200 poll respondents indicated they would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on abortion. However, only about 12 percent of poll-takers considered it the most important issue in the governor's race, and two-thirds of those responses indicated they would only support candidates who believe abortion should stay legal in Illinois.

For what it's worth, more than 70 percent of poll respondents ranked violent crime, economic recovery and property taxes as the top three issues in the campaign for governor.

So, let's revisit how Illinois came to have the most liberal abortion laws in the Midwest.

In 2019, the most powerful Illinois politician at the time — now-indicted former House Speaker Michael Madigan — broke ranks with his Catholic faith to allow lawmakers to debate and codify reproductive health protections in state law on Memorial Day weekend.

Madigan said it was after much deliberation and reflection that he "made the decision to allow debate and vote" on the state Reproductive Health Act.

“I believe it is more important to protect a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, including women who become pregnant as a result of rape or incest," Madigan said in a statement back then.

"With women’s rights under attack in an increasing number of states across the country, Illinois is now a leader in making sure women are protected, and their rights are upheld.”

A devout Catholic, Madigan was banned from receiving Communion in Springfield churches for his calculated, political decision that gave Pritzker the chance to sign expanded abortion protections into law.

If any Illinois politician is a reproductive-rights hero, it's Madigan.

By Pritzker's campaign logic, the former House speaker — whom the feds have accused of running the state's Democratic Party like a criminal enterprise — is a reproductive rights-protecting politician that voters should get behind.

That sounds ridiculous, right?

But that seems to be the Pritzker campaign's strategy for mobilizing suburban women voters to vote for candidates, present governor included, who will protect access to legal abortions.

It's a sneaky attempt to convince Republican voters to focus on a politically divisive, national issue regarding the legality of abortion that has been decided in Illinois in hopes one of the three white, Trump-loving, anti-abortion candidates wins the hotly contested primary, since probably none of them have a shot at winning the general election.

No matter who wins in November, Illinois' governor doesn't have a vote on federal abortion laws. The Illinois Democratic Party's massive legislative majority makes it extremely unlikely that laws limiting reproductive rights are at risk of being overturned in our state.

For Pritzker's re-election bid, the national abortion debate seems like a political red herring aimed at distracting suburban women voters from considering the immediate troubles people are up against every day that state politicians could do something about.

If the answers of Patch Poll respondents are any indication, plenty of Illinoisans consider those issues to be a governors' response to increasing violent crime, property taxes and helping regular folks make a comeback after having their pockets picked by economic effects of the coronavirus crisis.

Or, as the mayor of Aurora calls them, "Pritzker's failures as governor."

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.Read More From Mark Konkol:

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