James Talarico, Running for Senate as a Crusader Against Billionaires, Holds Big-Ticket Fundraiser With Billionaire Hyatt Heir JB Pritzker
Left-wing Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who says "billionaires" are "destroying this country," held a big-ticket Chicago fundraiser with billionaire Hyatt Hotels heir and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.), where attendees were encouraged to contribute as much as $13,500 to attend.
The invitation for the Wednesday evening fundraiser, which was first reported by the New York Times's Teddy Schleifer, lists prominent liberal donors Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett as part of a host committee and touts Pritzker as the "special guest." An online RSVP page shows that a ticket cost at least $500, while "hosts" contributed $5,000 and "champions" contributed $13,500. Contributions above the federal limit to an individual candidate of $3,500 went to the Texas Democratic Party and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to the invitation.
While Talarico for years advertised his support for "trans kids" and "bold, progressive ideas" as a state lawmaker in a deep-blue Austin district, he has pivoted to attacking billionaires while running for Senate in a state that backed President Donald Trump by double digits. Shortly before launching his campaign, in July 2025, Talarico said in a stump speech, "The only minority destroying this country is the billionaires. … Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools." Talarico's campaign site, meanwhile, says that the "biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right" but "top vs. bottom" and that billionaire "corruption" is hurting "working people."
Pritzker might be a target of Talarico's ire, were he not a Democratic official driving deep-pocketed donors to Talarico's campaign.
A scion of the Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, Pritzker attended the elite Milton Academy in Massachusetts, where tuition for boarding students costs nearly $80,000 a year, and his estimated net worth sits at $4.3 billion, according to Forbes. And while the Pritzker administration has passed more than 50 tax hikes, Pritzker himself is more frugal with his money: Years before he first ran for governor, in 2015, Pritzker had five toilets removed from his second mansion in order to classify it as "uninhabitable" in a property tax appeal. Cook County called it a "scheme to defraud" taxpayers.
"The county ultimately fell victim to a scheme to defraud … which resulted in the property owner ultimately receiving property tax refunds totaling $132,747.18 for the years 2012, 2013, and 2014, as well as additional tax savings of $198,684.85 for the years 2015 and 2016," county investigators determined, according to the Chicago Tribune. Years later, in December 2025, Hyatt Hotels paid the state of Texas a $1.25 million settlement after Talarico's opponent, Republican attorney general Ken Paxton, sued the company for violating consumer protection laws.
Talarico's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Included in Talarico's anti-billionaire rhetoric is a denunciation of big money in politics. In a February interview with the New Yorker, for example, Talarico swore off super PACs and compared his doing so to Jesus Christ turning down the Devil's temptations while fasting in the wilderness.
But Talarico's website includes a buried section that tacitly coordinates with super PACs by laying out instructions about what media markets to run ads in and what messages to include in them, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A super PAC run by Talarico's former chief of staff, Lone Star Rising, began running ads aligned with the page's instructions shortly after Talarico's campaign updated it.