When a right-wing provocateur last month posted a video outside Gov. JB Pritzker’s Chicago home encouraging viewers to “take action” after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the governor reached out to both Republican leaders of the Illinois legislature.
“I’m dealing with vastly increased threats on my family and myself in the wake of this week and this Republican Trumper went to my house, suggested that I’m taking God out of public life and encouraged people to ‘take action,’” the governor texted separately to Illinois Senate Leader John Curran and House Leader Tony McCombie. “I’d like to see condemnation of this from GOP leaders today.”
What followed was not exactly what Pritzker sought. Instead, he and McCombie, who are typically cordial in texts to each other, exchanged heated messages as McCombie rebuffed the governor’s request and called out Pritzker for some of his previous comments about Republicans. The governor shot back, sometimes in all capital letters, that her response was “absurd” and that she was playing politics.
“So you won’t condemn this guy coming to MY HOME (where my wife and children live) and calling me evil while encouraging people to ‘take action?’ GOT IT,” Pritzker wrote to McCombie.
While Senate GOP Leader Curran later issued a joint statement with Democratic Senate President Don Harmon condemning political violence more broadly, the testy back-and-forth between Pritzker and McCombie occurred just two days after Kirk’s death. Republicans and Democrats across the nation debated, discussed, and denounced political violence, while at the same time accusing the other side of perpetuating it.
President Donald Trump himself escalated the situation in the hours and days after Kirk’s death, saying publicly that rhetoric from “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
It also came at an especially tense time in Chicago between Pritzker and the Trump administration, as the president was just days into his sometimes-violent crackdown on illegal immigration in and around the city.
In Illinois, the debate about political violence among top leaders was more behind the scenes, according to text messages the Tribune received through the Freedom of Information Act. While the governor and state Republican leaders, such as McCombie, often engage in public sparring, their one-on-one texts—which the Tribune regularly obtains—are typically breezy and brief. But the tone was different on Sept. 12 when Pritzker texted both Curran, of Downers Grove, and McCombie, of Savanna.
The governor sent each a link to a social media video from right-wing influencer Ben Bergquam, in which Bergquam criticized Pritzker for blaming Trump for fomenting political violence. As Bergquam spoke, the influencer pointed behind him at the governor’s home in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, including the house address number.
“If you love America and the assassination of Charlie Kirk doesn’t inspire you to take action, I don’t know what will!” the video caption said.
After decrying legal protections for transgender people, abortion rights, and immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission, Bergquam, who hosts the show “Law & Border” and had been accompanying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents around Chicago, said, “Godless leftist policies are the problem, evil is the problem and it’s politicians like Gov. Pritzker.”
When Pritzker sent the link of Bergquam’s post and requested that Illinois GOP leaders condemn it, McCombie sent a three-paragraph response. She said she prayed for the safety of Pritzker and his family daily and has condemned political violence against Democrats before, including the shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota.
But she then turned the issue back on the governor, asking him to apologize for his own past statements. These included likening the actions of Trump’s administration in the early days of his second term to the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s and saying Republicans should never “know a moment of peace.” Pritzker has repeatedly said he was talking about the public expressing their opposition to the GOP through protests, not violence.
“I would like for you to publicly apologize for your rhetoric,” she said after citing the examples.
That’s when Pritzker responded with “GOT IT” before adding: “I think you know how absurd your response is. But I suppose you have a primary to run.”
Pritzker brought up the texts publicly weeks later, at an Oct. 7 appearance in Minneapolis.
“Neither one of them—I asked them to simply post something publicly or put a statement out, anything. It seems like just common decency to just say, ‘This is wrong,’ and they wouldn’t do it,” Pritzker said onstage at a summit hosted by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
In a statement after those remarks, McCombie said she condemned violence and added of Pritzker: “If he is serious about lowering the temperature, he should stop pointing fingers and take responsibility for his own words.”
Curran did issue a statement on Sept. 12 condemning political violence, a joint release with Harmon, of Oak Park. The statement did not mention the video at Pritzker’s house or any other specific incident. When Curran responded to Pritzker’s request with a text mentioning the joint statement, the governor didn’t respond, records show.
Neither Curran’s office nor Pritzker’s office provided a comment Wednesday on the text message exchanges.
After the June shooting of the Minnesota lawmakers, Robert Pape, a University of Chicago expert on political violence, wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that joint statements—such as the one from Harmon and Curran—are an effective tool for tamping down political violence.
“My research suggests that to de-escalate the political environment and reduce the risk of violence, America’s political leaders need to cross their political divides and make joint statements (and ideally joint appearances) that denounce all political violence, welcome all peaceful protest and call for respecting the rules, process and results of free and fair elections in the country,” Pape wrote.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/23/jb-pritzker-texts-gop-house-leader-influencer/
