Democratic voters kick Republican Bruce Rauner out of the Illinois governorship

One of the Repub­li­can gov­er­nors that Democ­rats set their sights on defeat­ing at the begin­ning of this cycle has now been top­pled, accord­ing to media projections.

Illi­nois’s next chief exec­u­tive will be a Demo­c­rat, the Chica­go Tri­bune reports. “Repub­li­can Bruce Rauner’s staff says the gov­er­nor has con­ced­ed to Demo­c­rat J.B. Pritzk­er and promised a smooth tran­si­tion,” the news­pa­per’s Jeff Coen reports.

Rauner’s con­ces­sion call to Pritzk­er came about 30 min­utes after polls closed, cam­paign spokesman Will Alli­son said.

Bare­ly any votes had been count­ed in the bit­ter race in which the two can­di­dates broke nation­al cam­paign spend­ing records by tap­ping their per­son­al for­tunes for hun­dreds of mil­lions of dollars.

Pritzk­er pumped $171.5 mil­lion into his cam­paign fund over the course of two years. The mon­ey paid for a non­stop stream of adver­tis­ing on TV and the inter­net to both attack Rauner and get Pritzker’s name in front of vot­ers in a state where he’s nev­er held elect­ed office.

And some of it went to oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic cam­paigns and caus­es, build­ing the par­ty with his per­son­al wealth just like Rauner did for Illi­nois Republicans.

Rauner has now been defeat­ed in a man­ner sim­i­lar to how he was elect­ed four years ago — a rather inter­est­ing turn of events.

Pritzk­er will inher­it a state gov­ern­ment grap­pling with a lot of fis­cal prob­lems, but he will have a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leg­is­la­ture to work to try to move his reform agenda.