JB Pritzker once sat on AIPAC’s national board. Now he says he wants nothing to do with it.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks on stage at The Chicago Theatre on November 12, 2025. Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Vox Media

(JTA) — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker blasted AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, and other special interest groups that poured money into Illinois’ House and U.S. Senate races this week.

A Jewish Democrat who was once an AIPAC donor, Pritzker called the $70 million in outside spending “interference,” and said AIPAC in particular had lost its way as a truly bipartisan group.

“It became an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump,” Pritzker told the Associated Press. “AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.”

AIPAC’s spending in a handful of Illinois congressional primaries was often at the center of the races’ coverage. The pro-Israel group claimed victory after none of the “Squad”-type, anti-Israel progressives won the nomination, though two of its four preferred House candidates lost.

Critics panned AIPAC for spending mostly through “shell PACs,” with innocuous-sounding names like “Elect Chicago Women” and “Affordable Chicago Now,” and said that was an indicator of AIPAC’s rapidly diminishing popularity among Democrats.

Pritzker, who is from one of Illinois’ wealthiest and most philanthropic families with a record of giving to Jewish causes, has a long record of supporting Israel. In 2013, he was honored at a fundraiser for Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces. He was once on the national board of AIPAC, and he spoke at a pro-Israel rally in the days following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

He is also a possible presidential candidate in party where a poll this week found that only 13% of members say they have a “positive” view of Israel, and where refusal of AIPAC support has become something of a litmus test.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also seen as likely to run in 2028, proudly said last month that he never has and “never will” accept any money from AIPAC.

While many Democrats’ positions on Israel have shifted over the course of the Gaza war, AIPAC has remained steadfast in drawing a red line against candidates who are open to conditioning military aid to Israel. Pritzker would be one of those candidates.

Though governors do not vote on matters of foreign policy, Pritzker came out in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ resolutions limiting weapons sales to Israel in 2025, saying it would send “the right kind of message.”

His comments on Wednesday were not his first public criticism of the group that he was once a donor to.

“I abandoned AIPAC more than a dozen years ago,” he said in a New York Times interview earlier this month. “It was an organization that had at one time been bipartisan in nature and really all about preserving a strong relationship between the United States and Israel. But about a dozen years ago, the organization began to lean much more to the right and much more pro-Trump, who had then become a candidate for president, and that disturbed me greatly.”

Pritzker noted that AIPAC was purely a public affairs council, and not a PAC at the time, meaning that it did not give money to candidates. It began donating directly to candidates only after forming a PAC in 2021.

“But the organization became political,” he said. “They created a super PAC. They began to get involved in elections directly and choosing to support candidates who were MAGA and right-wing and Trumpy.”

AIPAC, which prides itself on supporting candidates on both sides of the aisle, has faced criticism for endorsing more than 100 lawmakers who’d voted to overturn the election results after Trump’s loss on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I just didn’t want anything to do with that,” Pritzker said.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.