All six candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for Illinois governor squared off Tuesday night in the first televised forum of the campaign. Mary Ann Ahern reports.
In a new series of television ads, Illinois gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss will go after fellow candidates J.B. Pritzker and Chris Kennedy, comparing them to Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and President Donald Trump.
The ads, set to debut Thursday, are the first on the Democratic side to go negative, and appear just one day after the six gubernatorial candidates appeared on stage together in a televised forum on NBC 5.
The advertisements are critical of Pritzker and Kennedy for failing to release their tax returns, and also criticize both candidates for manipulating the property tax system to cut the amount of money they owed governments.
“Trump and Rauner, two rich guys who scammed the system to avoid taxes,” the narrator of the ad says. “Now these Democrats got caught copying them, with tax scams of their own.”
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Biss' criticisms of Pritzker carried over into Tuesday's forum, and the Democratic frontrunner fired back at his rival for the nomination.
"You're the only candidate on this stage who voted for (House Speaker) Mike Madigan and ran his SuperPAC in 2016," Pritzker said. "You've accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Springfield insiders and lobbyists, so I don't think you're not one to lecture here.
"You should just be who you are and stop criticizing others," he continued.
On Wednesday, Pritzker's campaign responded to the new ads, suggesting that Biss "must not be very thrilled with his performance" in the Democratic forum if he's the first candidate to go negative in the campaign.
