CHICAGO _ Just shy of a week since his electoral victory, Illinois Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker is short on details about the first thing he'll tackle in office, but he's firm about this much: He'll live in Springfield ... and Chicago during his four-year term.
"I'll be living at the governor's mansion in Springfield. Of course, my children are going to school here in Chicago and so I'll be doing a lot of commuting, my wife will also be doing a lot of commuting _ even my children will be doing a little commuting," he said in a brief interview with the Chicago Tribune.
"I thought it was unfair to take them out of their schools," he said, referring to his daughter, Teddi, 16, and son, Donny, 14. "One is in high school, one is going into high school _ we're excited about living in Springfield and spending time in central and southern Illinois."
It's a politically savvy move. Governors from the big city like to have a rebuttal to the Chicago governor vs. Downstate governor debate, which can be defined by where the state's chief executive calls home. Back in the 1990s, a spokesman for two-term Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, who hails from Springfield and occupied the mansion full time, used to famously respond to reporters' questions in that vein, saying Edgar was the governor of "all of Illinois."
Now-imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's failure to live in the mansion rankled taxpayers who expect their governor to live in the house they pay around $500,000 a year to keep open. He was criticized for racking up thousands of dollars in one-day trips between Chicago and the state capital. His successor, Pat Quinn, who like Blagojevich called Chicago home, vowed to live in the mansion, but a year into his first term records showed he stayed there only sporadically, the Tribune reported.
Outgoing Gov. Bruce Rauner and first lady Diana Rauner oversaw fundraising for what would become a $15 million remodeling of the governor's mansion, so the Pritzkers likely won't have a lot of work to do. The governor-elect said he has not heard from Rauner since election night.
