Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker revealed Monday that he’s lost 80 pounds in two years with the help of GLP-1 medication — but denied his regimen had anything to do with plans to run for president in two years time.
“I’ve been driven my whole life to lose weight,” Pritzker told “CBS Mornings” in a new interview. “The fact that I am now able to do it because this GLP-1 became available is truly, like, I mean, it’s something that has meant a lot to me. I have not made any decisions about what I might do in the future. I can tell you I want to be the governor of the state of Illinois for a while longer, and I’m running for re-election [this November].”
Asked point-blank if he would seek the Democratic nomination in 2028, the 61-year-old told reporter David Begnaud: “I honestly am focused on what’s best for the people of Illinois.”
Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, did not specify which drug he is taking or how much he currently weighs.
There is a long history of presidential candidates dropping weight before launching a run for the White House, usually unsuccessfully. In early 2013, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie lost at least 40 pounds after undergoing lap-band surgery ahead of a sucessful re-election campaign and an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in 2016.
During that same cycle, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dropped a similar amount of weight by adhering to the paleo diet, while Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) slimmed down by opting for a vegan lifestyle and intermittent fasting during the 2020 campaign.
Pritzker, whose heavy weight has made him a target of mockery by President Trump, told CBS that “I’ve been overweight most of my life, really, since I was probably seven or eight years old.”
In May 1972, when Pritzker was seven years old, his father Donald dropped dead of a heart attack while playing tennis in Hawaii.
“He was actually quite an active person, even though he was overweight, and so he was on a tennis court
and had a heart attack, and my mother was there, and he died in her arms,” the governor recalled.
In a bid to avoid his father’s fate, Pritzker started taking four-mile walks along the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, but it was a diagnosis of diabetes that made him decide to take weight-loss drugs.
“My doctor said, ‘Oh, no, you’ll never come off of it [insulin]. You’re going to have to do this the rest of your life, and I recommend that you take a GLP-1,’” he recalled.
“All of a sudden, on the third day, I was like, ‘You know, actually, I don’t need to eat that thing,’” Pritzker added. “But it was the strangest feeling. Now, I’m not suggesting everything changed in a week. It didn’t happen that way.”
Due to the governor’s experience, Illinois will begin covering weight-loss drugs for state employees, which Pritzker says will save taxpayer money in the long run.
“People will be less overweight, which causes so many other diseases … I have an opportunity just with the platform that I have as governor to tell people that this is something that can work for them,” he said. “I think they should do it with the doctor’s advice, but I can tell you at least for me it has been really life-changing.”
