CHICAGO _ Like Chicago's downtown on St. Patrick's Day weekend, a river of green has flowed through TV sets ahead of Tuesday's primary vote, as candidates for Illinois governor have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising during the long campaign.
The final weekend of in-person campaigning supplemented the nearly $65.7 million spent by candidates and interest groups on TV commercials in the race so far. The contest could become the most expensive race for governor in state history.
That TV spending total _ in just the primaries _ is more than the record $65.3 million Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner spent on his entire 2014 campaign.
Democratic candidate J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune who has put a record $69.5 million into his campaign, has spent nearly $33.5 million in TV advertising, according to a study by Advertising Analytics for NBC News. He has used the ads to try to both introduce himself to voters in his first statewide campaign and attack his lesser-funded opponents.
Pritzker said his money was aimed at "trying to build a campaign that will beat Bruce Rauner's, who's been so terrible for working families."
Rauner, a wealthy private equity investor who put $50 million into his re-election campaign in December 2016, has spent $16.5 million on TV so far _ assailing both Pritzker and his Republican primary challenger, state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton.
Of the remaining money, nearly $4.5 million has been spent by Democratic contender Daniel Biss, a state senator from Evanston, $2.8 million by Chris Kennedy, a businessman from Kenilworth, and $2.8 million by Ives, the study said.
In addition to ads from the candidates themselves, outside groups have paid big to oppose and support candidates. And there's nearly a half-million dollars of late money spent on TV ads from the Democratic Governors Association that attack _ but serve to reinforce _ Ives' conservative credentials while criticizing Rauner.
Rauner and the Illinois Republican Party he subsidizes decry the association's move as an assist to Ives. It comes as the governor spent months seeking to link Pritzker to Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan and imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, before turning his focus on Ives as the primary drew closer.
"What the Democrat Governors Association is doing is promoting Ives. They want Ives to win because they know they could beat her," Rauner said Saturday.
"Pritzker's always going to be the nominee. We don't want him getting momentum and we want the truth known. He's a corrupt insider. We want the truth known about Pritzker. He's going to be the nominee. Madigan rigged the system for him already," Rauner said.
Ives, who once said she needed $10 million to run an effective race against Rauner, has raised nearly $4 million.
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(Kim Geiger contributed to this report.)
