SE Illinois News

State Rep. Adam Niemerg (R-Teutopolis) contends there’s plenty of blame to go around for the “complete fail” grade Gov. J.B. Pritzker was given in a recent Brownstone Institute survey.

“There should have been legislative oversight from the very beginning of the pandemic,” Niemerg told SE Illinois News. “I have been very vocal about this from Day 1. Instead, the majority party has been content to just let the governor do whatever he wants with no input from the General Assembly. Instead of accountability, the majority party chose culpability.”

The Brownstone study composed data from every state from March 2020 through April 2021, with researchers adding “there’s a special place for governors that locked kids out of classrooms for a year and a half, ordered sick COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes, did not practice their own orders, shut down tens of thousands of businesses and still couldn’t beat the U.S. average in COVID-19 deaths or excess all-cause deaths.”

Niemerg said Pritzker's actions haven't been in the best interest of the state.

“I don’t think J.B. Pritzker has acted in the best interest of anyone throughout this pandemic,” he said. “He says he is following the science, but he has consistently done the opposite of what the science seems to suggest. Very early on, we knew that older people were more vulnerable to the virus than younger people. Instead of focusing on nursing homes and helping protect the most vulnerable, he stuck to his broad-based mandates. He has put ideology above facts”

Niemerg said the people of his 109th District have had it even harder than most.

“He seems to go out of his way to insult and demean the people I represent,” he said. “What I find most offensive about the governor’s response to the pandemic is he has never provided any detailed information on the data he is using to support his actions. When you are going to disrupt people’s lives the way he has done in the last two years he owes the people an explanation as to why he is taking the action and why he believes it will be successful.”

Niemerg said he finds it telling that Pritzker’s wife and daughter have spent most of the pandemic in Florida.

“Gov. Pritzker and other political elites know these lockdowns were a farce,” he said. “This is why so many of them have been caught violating their own mandates. People are tired of the arrogance of leaders like J.B. Pritzker, and they are tired of being lectured on policies the people making the policies routinely ignore.”

The Prairie State Wire reported Theodora “Teddi” Pritzker spent the New Year’s Eve in the Bahamas in a nightclub environment without a mask after her father urged residents to stay at home.

“If you are going to set up these draconian rules, you better follow them,” he said. “The fact that his family does not follow these rules shows what a phony Gov. Pritzker is. We all see the hypocrisy but sadly that is not going to stop J.B. Pritzker from continuing his mandates and control over our daily lives.”

Niemerg said the governor's lockdown policies have hurt people's ability to work.

“People’s lives have been upended by his authoritarian mandates,” he said. “People in my district could not get healthcare for anything other than COVID-19 because of his lockdown policies. People’s livelihood was destroyed because of his policies. So, yes, the people in my district are much worse off as a result of his leadership.”