PALATINE, Ill. – Gov. Bruce Rauner complained to fellow Republicans about his billionaire Democratic opponent, J.B. Pritzker, plowing $96 million more into his campaign war chest than he and his supporters have.

Rauner, himself a megamillionaire who has largely self-funded his two runs for office, spoke without a trace of irony.

“The guy has never worked an honest day in his life,” Rauner grumbled to supporters nursing beers at a suburban Chicago bar hosting an Illinois GOP rally this week. “He’s never had a job. He’s a member of the silver spoon club to put it nicely.

"He’s a trust fund baby. That’s all he is. The guy is a disaster.”

Polls suggest that Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel chain who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $3.2 billion, will coast to victory over Rauner in a blue state where Democrats are counting on voter anger with President Donald Trump to bolster their candidates up and down the ballot.

Still, as Election Day nears, the vitriol – and the ceaseless campaign advertising – isn’t abating in what's shaping up as the most expensive gubernatorial race in U.S. history.

More than $284 million has been raised for the Illinois governor’s race, more than the nearly $280 million spent in the record-setting 2010 California gubernatorial race in which Republican former Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman largely self-funded a losing campaign against Democratic incumbent Jerry Brown.

The amount of campaign cash raised in Illinois is even more astounding considering California had a population of about 37.3 million in 2010, nearly three times the size of the Land of Lincoln today.

The winner of Tuesday's election gets the opportunity to lead a state that's been bleeding population for years as it's mired by mountains of debt and a credit rating a notch above junk status.

Pritzker has raised $175.6 million – nearly all of it from his own pocket – and had spent more than $120 million by Sept. 30, according to Illinois Election Commission records.

Rauner, a former private equity investor with a net worth he once estimated at about $500 million, has collected more than $79 million for the re-election bid.

Another $29.3 million has been raised by primary challengers, the Conservative Party and Libertarian Party nominees and independent groups.

Pritzker says he’s outspending the governor by about the same margin that Rauner outspent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn four years ago.

He acknowledges the sum is enormous. But he said it would be political malpractice to “unilaterally disarm.”

He also justified his spending by noting that Rauner has aligned himself with deep-pocketed, conservative donors – wealthy hedge fund executive Ken Griffin and billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch – who back Republican candidates who seek to cut taxes and reduce government regulation of industries.

"He outspent his opponent 2 to 1 (in 2014), and now he’s complaining about it?” Pritzker asked.

“The fact is we have to win to get change," he told USA TODAY. "And the real change we’re trying to do is put Springfield back on the side of working families and not on the side of the Koch brothers and people like Bruce Rauner who are standing up for the most unfair tax system in the country.”

More:Midterms: Democrats poised to win governorships in election that will affect redistricting, presidential campaign

More:Andrew Gillum pledges to find cooperation with Trump, GOP-controlled Legislature

More:U.S. Census Bureau: Idaho population booms; Illinois drops to sixth-biggest state

More:Illinois Democrats wage brutal, pricey primary fight in governor's race

Billionaire vs. megamillionaire

Rauner has spent $50 million of his own money for the 2018 campaign, campaign finance records show, while Griffin, who heads the privately held hedge fund Citadel, has contributed $22.5 million to the governor’s re-election bid. The governor had spent more than $72 million on the re-election effort as of Sept. 30.

The governor, who escaped a primary challenge from state Rep. Jeanne Ives with a narrow victory, has not contributed any more to his campaign after dropping $50 million in his coffers in December 2016.

Rauner says he put a “huge fraction” of his fortune into the campaign.

“My grandparents were dairy farmers,” Rauner told USA TODAY. “They lived in a trailer. I didn’t inherit any money. I’ve worked hard. I’ve done well. And I’m proud of it.

"But I don’t have Pritzker's wealth. I don’t have anywhere close to it.”

The money on both sides have allowed the candidates to fund a vicious war for voters’ support over the airwaves and internet.

Toilets and sick veterans

Rauner has aired attack ads pointing out Pritzker’s family disconnected toilets from one of their Chicago mansions so it could be deemed uninhabitable while it was under renovation.

The move saved Pritzker about $330,000 in taxes. It also allowed Rauner to dub Pritzker "Chicago's porcelain prince of tax avoidance."

Pritzer paid the money to Cook County after an inspector general report leaked to the news media slammed the tactic as a “scheme to defraud.”

In another ad that began airing in October, titled “Unholy Union,” Rauner attempts to tie Pritzker to longtime Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan by showing two men standing at an altar as an officiant reads vows for an unsavory political marriage.

“Repeat after me,” the officiant says. “I, Mike Madigan, take you, J.B. Pritzker, as my unlawful partner in destruction, to raise property taxes, corrupt government and bankrupt Illinois’ future.”

In other ads, Rauner has used FBI wiretap recordings of phone calls between Pritzker and former governor Rod Blagojevich, who is serving a 14-year federal prison sentence for public corruption. Pritzker can be heard speaking disparagingly of black politicians.

On the stump, Rauner has slammed Pritzker as a “crook” and predicts that the billionaire will end up behind bars like Blagojevich – one of four Illinois governors imprisoned after leaving office in the last 50 years.

“You know what J.B. stands for? Jail bird,” Rauner says. “Do you know what else J.B. stands for? Junior Blagojevich.”

(The initials actually stand for Jay Bob.)

Pritzker dismissed Rauner’s attacks as the desperate throes of a politician on the precipice of defeat.

“He’s grasping at straws, hoping somehow people will believe his lies,” Pritzker said. “Frankly, after four years of failure and lies, Bruce Rauner doesn’t have any credibility with people."

Pritzker has punched back just as hard in his own advertising.

After the Rauner wedding ad this month, Team Pritzker launched an ad that shows Rauner repeatedly blaming others for the state’s school funding formula and a fatal Legionnaire's disease outbreak at a state-run veterans’ home.

The narrator touts Rauner as “the man who can do no wrong – according to himself.”

The office of the Illinois attorney general, a Democrat, announced last month that it opened an investigation into the Rauner administration's handling of a Legionnaire's disease crisis at a state-run veterans' home.

In another ad, Pritzker blames Rauner for the state's failure to agree on a state budget – a two-year impasse with the Democratic legislature that cost the state more than $1 billion in penalties and interest for late payments on bills.

The Pritzker campaign points to ways the money could have been spent: 6,000 books for every public school in the state, 375,000 meals for the elderly and poor, or a start to rebuilding state roads and bridges.

PolitiFact Illinois found the ad to be mostly false, because it didn’t take into account the Democratic legislature’s role in the impasse.

In another attack ad, Pritzker pointed out that the federal Environmental Portection Agency found that an industrial sterilization company, Sterigenics, owned by Rauner's former private equity firm was emitting toxins that might be elevating cancer risks in the Chicago suburbs.

Unavoidable advertising onslaught

In addition to the nonstop advertising, both candidates have used their war chests to boost down-ballot candidates and build up get-out-the-vote infrastructure.

Pritzker, for example, has given more than $2.9 million to Illinois attorney general candidate Kwame Raoul, making up more than half his campaign funding.

Kent Redfield, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois-Springfield, says the ceaseless advertising – on television, radio, social media, news sites, music-streaming apps such as Spotify and mailers – has turned off many voters.

“The advertising has been nonstop, and it follows you wherever you go on the internet,” Redfield said. “It is pretty overwhelming for voters here.”

Kim Gatenby, 43, became so annoyed by the endless advertising that she found herself being uncharacteristically churlish with a Pritzker campaign worker who texted her to remind her that early voting had started.

The Chicago woman, a registered Democrat, says she texted back the Pritzker campaign worker in colorful language to make it known she didn’t think much of the Democrat’s campaign.

Gatenby plans to vote for Pritizker because she sees him as the lesser of two bad choices.

“It’s gotten to a point where you wonder if they realize that they are now starting to alienate people who are going to vote for them,” she said. “It underscores the need to get money out of politics, so decent people with good ideas aren’t scared away from running.”