Left-wing Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico, who insists that "billionaires" are "destroying this country," quietly headlined a high-dollar fundraiser in Chicago with billionaire Hyatt heir and Illinois governor J.
B. Pritzker, where attendees were urged to give up to $13,500 for the privilege of attending.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, the Wednesday evening event, first flagged by New York Times reporter Teddy Schleifer, featured Pritzker as the advertised "special guest" and listed prominent liberal donors Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett on the host committee. An online RSVP page showed entry starting at $500, with "hosts" asked to contribute $5,000 and "champions" $13,500, while donations above the $3,500 federal cap for an individual candidate were routed to the Texas Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
For years, Talarico built his brand in a deep-blue Austin district by championing "trans kids" and "bold, progressive ideas," a posture that played well in a safely liberal enclave but is far less in tune with the broader Texas electorate. Now, as he seeks a statewide seat in a state that backed President Donald Trump by double digits, he has rebranded himself as a populist scourge of the ultra-wealthy, declaring in a July 2025 stump speech, "The only minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools."
On his campaign website, Talarico argues that the "biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right" but "top vs. bottom" and claims that billionaire "corruption" is crushing "working people." Yet his willingness to court one of the Democratic Partys richest power brokers suggests that his class-war rhetoric stops where the donor circuit begins.
Pritzker, whose presence helped draw deep-pocketed contributors to Talaricos cause, would seem an obvious target for the candidates anti-billionaire broadsides if he were not such a valuable political ally. A member of the family that built the Hyatt hotel empire, Pritzker attended the elite Milton Academy in Massachusettswhere boarding tuition approaches $80,000 a yearand holds an estimated net worth of $4.3 billion, according to Forbes.
While the Pritzker administration in Illinois has pushed through more than 50 tax increases, the governor has shown far more creativity when it comes to his own tax burden. Years before his first gubernatorial run, in 2015, he had five toilets removed from his second mansion so the property could be deemed "uninhabitable" for tax purposes, a maneuver Cook County officials later described as 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, leaving unanswered how the candidate reconciles his populist attacks on billionaires with his reliance on one of them to bankroll his Senate ambitions. The silence is particularly notable given Talaricos repeated denunciations of big money in politics and his insistence that Democrats must break their dependence on wealthy benefactors.
In a February interview with the New Yorker, Talarico vowed to reject super PAC support and likened his stance to a biblical act of moral courage, comparing it to Jesus Christ refusing the Devils temptations in the wilderness. That lofty comparison was meant to underscore his claim to be above the corrupting influence of outside money and special interests.
Yet reporting has revealed that Talaricos own campaign website contains a tucked-away section that effectively serves as a roadmap for allied super PACs, specifying which media markets to target and what themes to emphasize in their advertising, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon. A super PAC run by his former chief of staff, Lone Star Rising, began airing spots that closely tracked those instructions shortly after the campaign updated the page, underscoring the gap between Talaricos rhetoric and his political practice.
For voters who still believe in limited government, equal treatment under the law, and honest dealing in public life, the pattern is familiar: progressive politicians rail against wealth and corporate power in public while quietly cashing checks from the very elites they condemn. Talaricos alliance with Pritzker, coupled with his apparent backdoor coordination with a super PAC, raises a straightforward question for Texanswhether his campaign is truly about defending working families, or about consolidating power for the same liberal donor class he claims is "destroying this country."
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