Pritzker Toiletgate and a California House Me Too Nightmare: The Dog Days of Oppo (Exclusive)
Some of the hottest opposition research this summer has been circulating around one of Kamala Harris' more high profile VP contenders and Derek Tran, a key Dem House candidate in CA-45.
Welcome to the launch of Straight from the Hut, a limited-run 2024 campaign newsletter with scoops and campaign insights you won’t find anywhere else.
Before we get deeper into today’s pair of scoops (a four-minute, seven-second read, according to a robot I found online), a quick word on what I’m going for here:
The free version of this thing will be a roundup of my freelance clips and some clean cut what you need to know analysis about the race. The paid tier will be for scoops.
Then there’s a third tier for our Road Warriors, those who feel generous enough to chip in a little more to help fund campaign trail trips. If you liked my Trail Mix newsletter for The Daily Beast (RIP), I think there’s a very strong chance you’ll dig this.
(In the sake of full transparency, this newsletter’s paid tiers will end once I’m back on a team in a full-time role. There will be no yearly subscription in the traditional sense, so just think of what you can chip in for the next three months, tops.)
Now, the news…
Chicago’s Hottest Club Ahead of the DNC: J.B.’s Oppo Boo
Between my final days at The Daily Beast and Vice President Kamala Harris picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, I got ahold of an opposition research book circulating among Democratic operatives during the veepstakes.
The document makes the case for why Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker would have been a major liability on the ticket, had Harris chosen him.
Two of the most notable items included were about a niche Illinois scandal known as “toiletgate” and a cringeworthy, racially-involved deep cut going back to a much better known Prairie State boondoggle.
Let’s start with toiletgate.
‘Uninhabitable’
It’s a relatively victimless scandal, but the attack ads could write themselves.
Blasting over a swing state living room, they’d depict Pritzker—the 59-year-old heir to one of America’s largest family fortunes, largely stemming from the Hyatt hotel chain—as just another member of the wealthy elite looking after his own bottom line.
Specifically, his very high property taxes.
A Cook County Inspector General described the 2018 move as a “scheme to defraud” after Pritzker and his wife, Mary Kathryn Muenster, removed five toilets from a Chicago Gold Coast mansion. Doing so would have classified the home as “uninhabitable,” lowering the assessed value and bringing the property taxes down by $333,000.
With the quintet of loos out of commission, the home’s value on paper fell from $6.3 million to $1.1 million.
Prtizker initially defended the move to clear out the lavatories, saying he had “followed the rules.” But then he backtracked shortly afterward, and agreed to pay back the $330,000 in property tax savings.
By April 2019, Pritzker, his wife and brother-in-law were under a federal investigation stemming from toilet-gate. No updates have been provided from law enforcement since then.
Pritzker’s team did not return an initial request for comment on toiletgate.
‘The African-American thing’
The dossier’s other main item goes back to a scandal left in the wake of former President Barack Obama’s ascent to the presidency, which created a vacancy for his Senate seat in 2008.
Pritzker’s comments to one of his disgraced predecessors, former Illinois governor and Democrat-turned-ardent-Trump-supporter Rod Blagojevich, are one of the red flags identified in the dossier.
When Blagojevich was deciding who to pick for Obama’s vacant Senate seat, Prtiztker suggested, as captured on a wiretap, that he should appoint then-secretary of state Jesse White.
Pritzker assured “it covers you on the African-American thing,” and went on to describe White as the “least offensive” Black lawmaker to consider.
It’s not a great look with Harris leading the ticket as the nation’s potential first Black woman to hold the highest office in the land, nor is it helpful for Pritzker’s broader aspirations within the Democratic Party.
On the same wiretaps, Pritzker suggested himself as a new appointee for the position of Illinois treasurer.
For now, that chapter on Pritzker’s career is closed. His team also did not return a request for comment on the Blago wiretaps portion of the document.
However, after he foots the bill for the DNC, these lines of attack on Pritzker may re-appear come 2028 or 2032—or sooner, should Harris win and potentially appoint him to a Senate-confirmed position.
Derek Tran’s Nightmare ‘Me Too’ Costco Case
California Democratic House hopeful Derek Tran is running in one of the most important races in the country.
California’s 45th District, currently held by Rep. Michelle Steel, is one of 14 where Joe Biden won in 2020 with the seat remaining in GOP hands.
Tran is a political newcomer and a promising-looking candidate, an Army veteran coming from family of Vietnamese refugees in a district with one of the largest populations of Vietnamese-Americans in the U.S.
However, Tran’s past legal work could become a liability in the general against Steel.
‘Discriminated against for his gender’
Although he dropped his slate of legal cases for his House bid, one of his former clients stands out as Tran runs on protecting women’s rights.
Tran’s campaign wrote on his Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey in 2023 that holds he holds “bad actors accountable, ensuring that workers, immigrants, and survivors of sexual harassment get the justice they deserve.”
Yet in 2022, Tran began representing a Costco employee who sued the company after three women reported him internally for allegedly sexually assaulting them. Tran’s client argued he was “discriminated against for his gender due to the political climate and ‘me too’ movement.”
In evidence submitted by Costco to dismiss the lawsuit—which remains under active litigation—female employees accused Tran’s former client of repeatedly trying to touch them and remove their clothes, including on one occasion by allegedly cornering a fellow employee with his car before lifting up her shirt and trying to kiss her nipples.
“I would tell him to stop and he would continue until I would get forceful and shove him off or slap him. It should never have to get to that point,” another one of the Costco employees said of Tran’s former client, according to court documents. “A simple no should be more than enough.”
Tran’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment when reached by Straight from the Hut.