Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker on Friday offered a full-throated case for why his state’s primaries should supplant Iowa’s caucuses as the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, repeatedly emphasizing the importance of electoral diversity in the candidate selection process.

“I do not think Iowa should go first,” Pritzker told POLITICO at the 10th annual State Solutions Conference, conducted on the sidelines of the National Governors Association’s winter meeting in Washington.


“We have the most diverse state that you could have for picking a presidential nominee,” he said. “We have tech industry. We have agriculture. … We have rural, ex-urban, urban communities all over the state. We have, you know, every swath of different belief across the state of Illinois.”