Pritzker Family Member Is Top Donor To Kiper's NH Gov Campaign

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill.) is on the short list of likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidates, and now one of his family members is on the list of donors to Jon Kiper’s long-shot bid for New Hampshire governor.

In fact, the $10,000 donation from Pritzker’s cousin Jennifer accounted for nearly a third of Kiper’s entire $32,190 raised in the last quarter.

Coincidence, or something more?

A spokesperson for the Kiper campaign says Jennier Pritzker contacted it, unsolicited, to make the donation.

“We were delighted to see a generous contribution from Jennifer Pritzker,” said Kiper’s campaign manager Oscar Lakowicz. “Jon’s message of putting our working families and communities first is resonating with people all across the nation, from a wide variety of backgrounds and economic classes. Jennifer’s team reached out to the campaign first, signaling interest in supporting our working-class platform.”

Kiper, a former Newmarket town councilor, is the only announced Democrat challenging incumbent Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Kiper ran in the 2024 Democratic gubernatorial primary, where he raised just over $58,000 — compared to the more than $2 million raised by both Joyce Craig and Cinde Warmington — and got 9.4 percent of the vote.

While Jennifer is Gov. Pritzker’s cousin, the appearance of the Pritzker name in a financial filing for a Democratic gubernatorial campaign is noteworthy.

Gov. Pritzker has made no secret of his interest in running for president. He was the keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club fundraising dinner in April, and he is a frequent guest on left-leaning cable news programs.

Both are among the 13 billionaire heirs in the Chicago-based Pritzker clan, making Jennifer — who was born James Nicholas Pritzker — the world’s only transgender billionaire.

And while both JB and Jennifer Pritzker have long been politically active, the latter was a committed Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 — but not since.

“I started voting in 1972, and I didn’t vote Republican (only) twice—in 2004, when I voted Libertarian; and in 2020, when I voted Democrat because I wanted to make sure Trump didn’t get back to the White House,” Jennifer Pritzker said in a 2023 interview.

In that same interview, Pritzker addressed being a high-profile member of the transgender community.

“In addition to being a public figure, I’m also something of a PUBIC figure. It’s like I’m a novelty figure, a sideshow exhibit: ‘Is it a he? Is it a she? Does it stand to sit and pee?’

“Why should being LGBT be a bigger factor than having blue or green eyes, or if you’re 28 or 58? Certain things are what they are, and you can do good or not-so-good things with them—but that’s not all of what you are,” Pritzker said.

Ironically, Kiper has made “Tax the Rich!” a central pillar of his campaign.

“We need to stop electing people who are afraid to tax billionaires,” Kiper said in a social media post. “I’m not afraid to tax billionaires, and really, my plan is to tax greed.”

NHGOP state chair Jim MacEachern accused Kiper of hypocrisy over the Pritzker cash.

“The Democrat’s leading candidate for governor loves to rage against billionaires and corporations, except when he’s begging them to bankroll his campaign. If that’s how Jon Kiper runs his campaign, imagine how he’d run the state.”

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.