This article was featured in New York ’s One Great Story newsletter. Sign up here .

The first scandal of the 2028 presidential campaign arrived in the form of an October surprise — just three Octobers earlier than usual. Here’s what happened: Sometime last year (his office won’t say precisely when) in a Las Vegas casino (his office won’t say exactly which one), Illinois governor and billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune J. B. Pritzker spent the night playing cards. He had asked his staff if gambling on his vacation might be a bad look for a sitting governor. His concerns were allayed. Who would know let alone care? Then the governor went on a blackjack heater and won $1.4 million.

The windfall, reported in Pritzker’s financial-disclosure filings, raised a lot of questions. D

See Full Page