Gov. JB Pritzker plans Wednesday to highlight the laws and policies Democrats have championed on behalf of working families in Illinois and the need to continue that trend in the 2022 elections.

The Democratic governor, a 56-year-old billionaire businessman who was elected in 2018 when he defeated Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner, outlined in a brief interview Tuesday what he will tell Democrats during a rally Wednesday on the Director’s Lawn during Governor’s Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield.  

“We’re going to remind people how important it is to elect Democrats up and down the ticket and up and down the state of Illinois,” Pritzker told The State Journal-Register. “We’ll remind people it was Democrats who raised the minimum wage. Republicans voted against that.”

The invitation-only, noon rally will take place after a 9 a.m. fundraising brunch Wednesday by the Illinois Democratic County Chairs’ Association at the Crowne Plaza Springfield. 

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The event, which will feature U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., as keynote speaker, has been moved outdoors, under a tent with open sides “to further mitigate any concerns from attendees about coronavirus,” association executive director Dan Kovats said.

Pritzker at first said he would skip the event because he didn’t want to attend a large, indoor gathering when COVID-19 cases, fueled by the delta variant, are spiking across the state.

By the time the association moved the event outdoors, Pritzker said he had made other plans to spend time with his family. Democratic elected officials from across the state have been invited to attend and speak at the noon rally Wednesday.

In listing his party’s accomplishments, Pritzker said Democrats spearheaded the “largest infrastructure bill in the nation.” He was referring to the $45 billion, six-year “Rebuild Illinois” program, enacted through a package of bills passed by the General Assembly on a bipartisan basis in 2019 and signed into law by Pritzker.

He said his administration inherited a 140,000-person backlog of applicants for Medicaid because of application processing delays during the Rauner administration.

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All but 10,000 of those individuals have been added to the Medicaid rolls, and work continues to get through the remaining backlog, the governor said.

Pritzker said Democrats have dealt with Republicans in the legislature who have voted “no” on key bills he signed into law that expanded eligibility for state-subsidized child care and recently increased funding for K-12 education, raised teacher salaries and made college more affordable.

Republicans have criticized Democrats for overspending and not doing much to reduce the state’s multibillion-dollar “structural deficit.” 

Republicans say Illinoisans rejected Democratic economic policies in November when Pritzker’s proposed constitutional amendment establishing a graduated state income tax failed to receive enough votes to pass.

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Republicans also said the economic gains the state made in 2021, in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, were artificial and resulted mainly from an infusion of billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funding from the federal government.

Pritzker took a different view of what Democrats accomplished.

“We balanced the budget and got the state its first two credit upgrades in more than 20 years, and again, Republicans voted against that,” he said.

“There are things that people believe across the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “It’s only the Democrats who have stood up for a woman’s right to choose,” he said, adding that it was mostly Democrats passed laws decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana and legalized medical and recreational use of cannabis.

Pritzker has announced his plans to run for a second four-year term and isn’t expected to have any credible challengers for the Democratic nomination in 2022.

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Republicans who have announced their intention to run for the GOP nomination for governor include state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, former state Sen. Paul Schimpf of Waterloo, Chicago businessman Gary Rabine and former law enforcement officer Christopher Roper of Delavan.

According to the Illinois Political Playbook newsletter, another potential candidate is Richard Porter, who represents Illinois on the Republican National Committee.

When asked to assess his potential Republican challengers, Pritzker said, “Well, it’s a mess over there.

“They’re going to have to work their own politics out,” he said. “Democrats are trying to save people’s lives and make sure that we have a larger number of people vaccinated, that we’re keeping our kids safe in schools. It’s Democrats that are working hard to lift up working families across the state, and the Republicans voted against all of these things that we care about.”

Pritzker added: “I can’t imagine that people would want to go back to the ‘bad old days’ of Republicans being in the governor’s office. That’s what we got rid of in 2018. We’ve got more work to do to make sure that everybody gets what they need in our state, and especially that we live up to the values of putting Springfield back on the side of working families.”

Contact Dean Olsen: dolsen@gannett.com; (217) 836-1068; twitter.com/DeanOlsenSJR.