SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Gov. JB Pritzker, in a text exchange with Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, expressed concerns about Mayor Brandon Johnson’s ability to keep United Airlines’ headquarters in Chicago, another stark shot from the governor amid his ongoing friction with the mayor.

The back-and-forth between the two statewide public officials occurred last month as rumors were reignited that the prominent airline company might move to Denver because of a recent property purchase near that city’s airport. Pritzker stressed the importance of ensuring Johnson did not do anything to “push them out” in the text conversation, which the Tribune obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

The governor was responding to earlier concerns raised by Mendoza over the potential exit of United, which is one of Chicago’s most recognizable companies.

“Susana. You should already know that I am on top of this as well as anyone,” Pritzker texted Mendoza on Feb. 12 after she reached out to him to raise concerns about a United move. “I have been in constant conversation with United for more than two years, and their CEO and their lobbyist have assured me that they do not intend (anytime in the foreseeable future) to leave Chicago.”

Then the governor remarked: “Meanwhile, as you know the state has almost nothing to do with O’Hare so you (redacted) should make sure the Mayor doesn’t do anything to push them out.”

“I know you’re on top of it,” Mendoza replied, as she implored Pritzker to continue his dialogue with the airline. “Right now you have the loudest adult voice in the room to reassure these important businesses that we value them as strategic partners.”

“In absence of any semblance of competency coming out of the 5th floor,” Mendoza wrote, referring to the location of Johnson’s office in City Hall, “I don’t blame them for positioning themselves as potentially looking at other opportunities, even if that’s not the case. I do believe they’re committed to Chicago and that you’ve had these conversations with them. I’m just reaching out to you to ask you to keep that up.”

She ended that message with a thumbs-up emoji.

While ego matches between Chicago mayors and Illinois governors are nothing new, they can at times be a political liability for the two leaders occupying those seats. Johnson allies have warned of repercussions for Pritzker, suggesting the Democratic governor who is mulling a possible run for president in 2028 could be vulnerable in a presidential primary if he doesn’t repair his rocky relationship with Chicago’s Black mayor.

Meanwhile Johnson, a progressive freshman chief executive, has repeatedly noted he needs cooperation from Springfield to achieve his agenda — more Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Transit Authority funding, additional revenue streams and a new taxpayer-funded Bears stadium. City finances remain fraught thanks to a longtime structural deficit that portends difficult budget cycles ahead.

A Pritzker spokesman declined to comment Wednesday about the governor’s exchange with Mendoza or whether he had discussed the United Airlines issue with Johnson.

In a statement on Wednesday, Johnson said the governor’s office has not mentioned any concerns to him about the airline leaving the city.

“We welcome conversations with the Governor around how to best maintain our relationship with United Airlines,” the mayor’s statement said. “We have had productive conversations with the Governor’s team on a number of critical issues facing Chicago and our state, but they have not expressed any substantive concerns on this particular issue in those talks.”

The mayor’s response concluded with a pointed request for Pritzker and other counterparts in Springfield: “Particularly in this moment, with ongoing threats from the federal government, our city and state need to focus on being ‘united’ in defense of working people.”

The relationship between Pritzker and Johnson has been defined by highly publicized disputes over the recent efforts to regulate the sale of hemp products, as well as previous debates about whether the state needs to boost its funding for public education and strategies to house tens of thousands of migrants sent to the city from the southern U.S. border.

The latest sign of a lack of confidence in Johnson between the two state leaders followed new plans submitted by United over a swath of land it recently purchased near Denver International Airport. Though far from a confirmation that the company would move its headquarters, it raised anxieties that another major corporation would abandon Chicago.

Several large companies, such as Boeing, Citadel and Caterpillar, announced they planned to leave Chicago before Johnson was elected mayor while the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and McDonald’s have since raised the prospect of following suit. But Johnson has challenged the narrative the city is anti-business, noting PsiQuantum Center is moving into the city — a project Pritzker also played a major role in — and that United and American airlines have agreed to the city’s proposed changes to a massive, delayed rebuild at O’Hare International Airport.

United, which has a key hub at O’Hare in addition to its office headquarters in Willis Tower, has focused on expanding its hub in Denver. The airline company acquired 113 acres of undeveloped land outside the Denver airport in 2023, with spokesperson Patrick Mullane saying at the time it would be used for a pilot training center.

But that facility isn’t taking up the entire parcel, and United last December also submitted plans to the city of Denver saying it was exploring adding office space that would accommodate about 5,000 employees, the Denver Post reported. At the same time, the airline has continued to expand its footprint in Chicago, with its vice president for O’Hare announcing in February that United plans to add six more gates at its hometown hub by October.

Mullane on Wednesday reiterated in a statement that United’s new site near the Denver airport is reserved for “future options, of which there are no set plans beyond using the land to expand our Flight Training Center capabilities.”

Mendoza has been an ardent critic of the Johnson administration on social media and is considering a run for Chicago mayor. In an interview Wednesday, she said that even if the speculation over United leaving was unfounded, they point to the city’s governance problems.

Mendoza said those problems include the ticking time bomb that is the city budget’s structural deficit and how that could spell an adverse effect on Pritzker and the rest of state government.

“They can’t make (Pritzker’s) job easier, I’ll tell you that,” Mendoza said. “Whenever you make decisions that are bad for the city, they’re also bad for that state.”

She said it’s crucial for the mayor and the governor to work together, especially in matters concerning Chicago in its role as the state’s economic engine.

“Everyone’s always going to have disagreements. But in order to even have a disagreement, that means there should be some level of communication, and I just don’t think that that level of communication exists,” Mendoza said. “In the absence of that leadership, the governor has to play an even bigger role in filling that vacuum, or people like myself or other elected officials who have an understanding of what’s going on.”

In January, Pritzker publicly indicated there were problems between him and the mayor. In a news conference, Pritzker said several issues, including poor communication, was partly responsible for Johnson’s opposition to a hemp regulation bill that capped the amount of THC that hemp-derived products could contain and cracked down on hemp advertising aimed at kids.

“He doesn’t call very often,” Pritzker said of Johnson after the vote got pulled. “Maybe in the time that he’s been mayor, he’s called me, perhaps, five times?”

The defeat of the hemp legislation, which Johnson opposed because he thought it would hobble smaller stores that sell hemp-derived products and make an end-run around Chicago’s authority to tax the product itself, was a rare loss for Pritzker. It was also a unique moment in which the usually mild-mannered governor directly criticized Johnson after tensions between the two had simmered behind the scenes.

Pritzker had sought to downplay the discord. But the Tribune recently reported that hours before the governor suffered the hemp-bill defeat, Pritzker’s chief of staff withdrew from a short-lived effort to convene with Johnson and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to plan for President Donald Trump’s second term.

On Jan. 6, Anne Caprara sent a curt email informing the chiefs of staff to the mayor and Cook County Board president that she was opting out of their “scenario planning” meetings organized shortly after Trump’s November win.

“I won’t be participating in these meetings going forward,” Caprara wrote in the exchange obtained by the Tribune via an open records request, adding that she intended to later “catch up separately” with Preckwinkle’s chief of staff.

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Yin reported from Chicago.

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