* Penny Pritzker’s additional credentials include the following:
Past:
Present:
* Over the years, Pritzker has contributed to the political campaigns of numerous Democratic candidates, including such notables as:
Hillary Clinton
James Clyburn
Chris Dodd
Dick Durbin
Tom Harkin
Claire McCaskill
Barack Obama
Harry Reid
Jay Rockefeller
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Jon Tester
Tom Udall
Robert Wexler
Democratic Party of various states
(Donation information courtesy of OpenSecrets.org)
* Pritzker’s effort to reduce her own tax burden is something for which the entire Pritzker family has gained considerable renown over the years. According to The New York Times: “The Pritzkers were pioneers in using tax loopholes to shelter their holdings from the Internal Revenue Service … including setting up a series of offshore trusts that sheltered their assets from taxes. The IRS fought several battles with the Pritzkers over the arrangements. But the agency was hindered by foreign bank secrecy laws that concealed what the Pritzkers owned.”
* According to documents from the Cook County, Illinois assessor’s office, Pritzker and her husband (ophthalmologist Bryan Traubert) appealed the property-tax bill on their 8,400-square-foot Lincoln Park mansion ten times between 2006 and 2012, claiming that it had been assessed at too high a value. Twice their appeals were successful, saving them nearly $200,000 in tax outlays.