After victory, Pritzker names chief of staff, heavy-hitting transition team

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Just hours after winning the governor’s race, Democrat J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday announced his transition team — full of heavy-hitters such as former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, Grosvenor Capital Management CEO Michael Sacks and Illinois AFL-CIO President Michael Carrigan.

Pritzker, too, named his administration’s chief of staff: his campaign manager Anne Caprara.

Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton, the state’s first African-American lieutenant governor, will chair the transition committee. Members include Barbara Bowman, an early childhood education advocate and a former consultant to the U.S. secretary of education during President Obama’s first term; Carrigan; Edgar; Sol Flores, executive director of La Casa Norte, a Humboldt Park social service agency, and a former congressional candidate, and Marty Nesbitt, co-CEO of Chicago-based private equity firm, The Vistria Group.

There are some Obama ties. Nesbitt is head of the Obama Foundation, and Bowman is former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s mother.

The transition committee staff includes Caprara, former Hillary Clinton organizer and Pritzker campaign consultant Nikki Budzinski, Pritzker’s political director Sean Rapelyea, former Comptroller Dan Hynes; State Rep. Christian Mitchell, who is also serving as the state Democratic Party’s interim executive director; Sacks and former Chicago Board of Education board member Jesse Ruiz. Ruiz is the current president of the Chicago Park District.

“I am honored to be chairing the transition committee with a remarkable group of leaders who represent the diversity and strength of our state,” Stratton said in a statement. “From day one, J.B. and I have made a commitment to making sure Illinoisans across the state have a seat at the table as we build an administration to put Springfield back on the side of working families.”

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