East Central Reporter

Video has emerged of small businessman James Dinaso being pushed out of a J.B. Pritzker for Governor rally held at the It was from Charleston Public Library on Thursday, Aug. 25.

Dinaso who owns a gym and personal trainer company said he was forced out of business by Pritzker's Covid protocols. When he went to address Pritzker on the matter at the rally Dinaso was accosted by the crowd and forced the leave the public space.

One crowd member climbed over two rows of chairs, lunged at him and pushed him as Dinaso was leaving.

Dinaso said his sole purpose for the comment was to draw an eye to Pritzker’s hypocrisy as the billionaire allowed gyms at his Hyatt hotel chain to remain open.

“Pritzker allowed for his hotel fitness rooms to be opened during that same period of time,” Dinaso told East Central Reporter.  

“And I just found that absolutely outrageous because if you’ve been to a hotel fitness room it is one of the dirtiest places in the hotel and it's all self-cleaning – I mean, you're supposed to wipe them down and whatnot. When we have cleaning protocols and all the different things in our place, everything is sanitized.”

“I just thought that's outrageous that his business stays open, our business has closed. And I found that extremely unfair.  So when I heard that Governor was coming to do a campaign stop in Charleston, Illinois, I went to the public library where he was at, and I wanted to address that issue with him. And they tried to when I got there, I got there early. I sat down. I bothered nobody. I wasn't a distraction. And they tried throwing me out of the room.”

“I said, ‘what do you why discriminate against me? And they kept telling me that I wasn't a Democrat. I said, yeah, that's right. I'm an independent. And they said it was for Democrats only. And that was totally untrue. It was a room reserved at the library by the Democrats.”

“However, it was open to the public said so on their Facebook page. It also the Democratic Central Committee, then head of the Mac White, invited to talk with the newspaper. So it was an open meeting and they wanted to sterilize it because they didn't want anyone there that might address the governor with a question that didn't fit their campaign narrative.”

“So they were very hostile to me the whole time I sat in there for an hour and a half, I took a lot of verbal abuse from the people that were in there. I said nothing, and the governor got up and started talking about how he does all these things for working families and, you know, his response to COVID. And I simply stood up, said, you shut my fitness business down during COVID, yet you kept your hotel rooms open during the same time. And that's when I was accosted by the crowd.”

“I was grabbed. I was thrown. I was told one guy ran from the front and tried to try to go over. One of the rows, the chairs to get at me. I sidestepped them and I was on my way out the door. He proceeded to come back at me and, you know, got his hands on me, pushed me backwards and even pressed his own.”

“People were saying, ‘Oh, hands off, hands off. We don't do that. We don't do that.’ And I was not violent was not violent toward anyone. I never laid a finger on anybody. I just was, you know, redressing my governor and my government for, you know, issues that I had with them, which is totally within my First Amendment right to do any public campaign rally. And I was physically accosted.”

A video of the event was posted to YouTube on Thursday, Oct. 6.

It shows Dinaso raise from his chair and addressing his comments at Pritzker before being booed, heckled and pushed out of the room. Another angle shows Pritzker speaking before Dinaso addresses him. 

“There is always one in every crowd,” Pritzker said without condemning the violence against Dinaso.

The alleged aggressor who pushed Dinaso – Jacob Smallhorn – was named in a “motion to intervene.”

Smallhorn – who is charged with battery in the case – is State’s attorney Jesse Danley’s personal attorney.

Danley made a “request for special prosecution assistance” to be removed from the case.

“I work closely with Attorney Jacob Smallhorn on a variety of legal matters. I believe the appointment of a special prosecutor is needed on this matter to avoid the appearance of any impropriety,” Danley said in a petition to the court.

That document was revealed via a FOIA request.