Penny Pritzker, Barack Obama’s fairy godmother

Billionaire Penny Pritzker put Barack Obama on the road to the presidency. What will she get in return, asks Charles Laurence

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Penny Pritzker is the fairy godmother whom Barack Obama will be thanking most profoundly - if privately - when he gets to his Inauguration Ball in Washington in January.

Among the richest Americans - 153rd on the Forbes 400 List with about $2bn to her name - Pritzker has plenty of gold dust to sprinkle, and when Obama organized his presidential campaign, she took on the role of his National Finance Chair.

She did a good job: Barack trounced both primary rival Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain in the race for campaign funds. By the end, he had five dollars to every one of McCain's.

But Pritzker showered Obama with more than money: before any of the rest of us had heard of Barack Obama, she had taken him under her wing to give him the keys to the Chicago Establishment's fabled political 'machine' which has taken him to the White House.

It has been a triumph for Pritzker as well as for the new President. Her victory makes her the undisputed chief of one of Chicago's wealthiest families, which has a combined wealth of more than $12bn and which founded the Hyatt hotel chain and myriad other businesses. It is also notorious for its secrecy and its feuds.

Pritzker showered Obama with more than money: before any of us had heard of Barack Obama, she had taken him under her wing

The Pritzkers are quintessential Chicago Gold Coast, descendants of Jewish immigrants who built the Windy City in America's heartland alongside the Irish, the Poles and, a generation later, the black migrants from the Deep South.

Penny Sue, 49, is the granddaughter of Abram Pritzker, the immigrant born in 1896 who launched the Hyatts which grew into a global brand under the rule of his sons Jay and Robert, both of them Penny's uncles. She went to Harvard and then to Stanford for an MBA before coming home to Chicago to join the family firm.

Penny Pritzker, married, has two teenage children and lives in Lincoln Park. With a fourth generation growing up, there are