Pritzker Campaign Releases Records Refuting Discrimination Suit

CHICAGO — The J.B. Pritzker campaign released records Thursday refuting several allegations contained in a civil rights lawsuit from 10 current and former staffers. A day earlier, Pritzker unequivocally denied the claims contained in the complaint, which was filed in federal court in Chicago Tuesday following the expiration of a $7.5 million settlement offer.

According to documentation provided by the campaign, a campaign worker who the suit said had been denied housing in Peoria was actually provided with two rooms a night at different hotels for several of the 10 days she spent working for the campaign. A campaign office on Chicago's South Side that the suit said was considered too dangerous for the candidate to visit was, in fact, visited by Pritzker on four occasions. And a staff member who the complaint claimed had been given a "shiny new job title and pay raise" and "encouraged to cut his dreadlocks" described the suggestion as "so far-fetched and weak."

Hotel Receipts

Campaign records provide a starkly different account of the brief period Kasmine Calhoun, one of the plaintiffs on the suit, spent working for Pritzker last month in Peoria. Between her official start date of Sept. 4 and the day she submitted her resignation on Sept. 13, the campaign wound up booking two hotel rooms on four separate nights.

Calhoun said she did not like her $56.44-per-night room at the America's Best Value Inn so the campaign provided her a room on the night of Sept. 4 at the Fairfield Inn and Suites in East Peoria for about $122, according to copies of receipts.

When the campaign booked a room for about $76 a night at the Super 8, 1816 West War Memorial Drive, Calhoun said she did not want to stay there and complained to a local official who booked her a $109-per-night room using credit card points at the Candlewood Suites Grand Prairie Peoria, according to Pritkzer's campaign, which said Calhoun had the option of staying at two hotels on the nights of Sept. 4, 7, 8 and 9.

All campaign staff attended a training on Sept. 10 in Burr Ridge, and every member was provided a room at the Sheraton Lisle Naperville that night, Pritzker's campaign said. During the training, campaign staff found Calhoun supporter housing in Peoria, where she stayed for one night, Sept. 12, before submitting her letter of recommendation. The details of the campaign's hotel arrangements were first reported Wednesday night by the Peoria Journal-Star.

The lawsuit claimed that Calhoun had been denied a place to stay due to racism from Pritzker supporters in Peoria. It said that she was "forced to sleep in her car and at the campaign office" and was told to "make due" with a hotel in an "unsafe part of town."

Office Visits

Pritzker's campaign also provided records pushing back on a claim in the suit alleging staff members at a Chicago campaign office were forced to work in unsafe conditions considered too dangerous for the candidate to visit until "they stop shooting."

"Apparently, the Region 6 Office [at 5401 S. Wentworth Ave.] is safe enough for black and Latino men and women but not a white man," the lawsuit claimed.

But a table produced by the Pritzker campaign shows 10 Chicago campaign offices, the date they opened and the dates they were visited by Pritzker and running mate Juliana Stratton. It indicates Pritzker visited the South Side office on four occasions between February and July.

According to the table, Pritzker visited each of the eight offices that had been opened prior to last month. It suggested he visited three of those – in Austin, the West Side and Beverly – only once on the day it opened. The suit makes no mention of those offices.

Haircut Encouraged?

The lawsuit named a regional field director who it said had taken complaints of racial discrimination and harassment at campaign offices on the South and West sides to senior staff on behalf of field organizers. It said he was promoted "in exchange for his silence," but the staff member denied receiving a promotion or "a raise of any sort."

And contrary to the lawsuit, he said, no one had told him to cut his hair.

"I will not let anyone discredit who I am as an activist, as [a] father and as a black man," the staff member said in a post on social media.

Earlier: Staffers Accuse JB Pritzker Campaign Of Racial Discrimination »