Eric Zorn, here in 2018:
In a wiretap recording made by federal law enforcement officials investigating Blagojevich for public corruption and obtained by the Tribune, Pritzker was heard suggesting African-American Secretary of State Jesse White for the position: “Even though I know you guys aren’t like, you know, bosom buddies or anything, it covers you on the African-American thing,” he said. Pritzker said that White was “Senate material in a way that (Democratic state Senate President) Emil Jones isn’t. … He’s just, I don’t know how to say it exactly, but Emil’s a little more crass.” ...
Jones, who has not accepted Pritzker’s apology, brought up something Pritzker said in public that may prove even more damaging with Democrats and African-Americans. It was in a cable TV interview in early 2012, when Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were vying in the GOP presidential primaries and Obama had no serious opposition for re-election.
“Are you going to vote for this president?” asked the reporter.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” said Pritzker. “I don’t know who the nominee is going to be on the Republican side. … Ultimately, as in every election, it’s going to be a choice between two people and two parties that you’re not 100 percent behind. … You just have to pick … the best of a mediocre set of choices.”
So he considered Obama mediocre? So mediocre that he might vote Republican?
