“There’s been this obsession that ‘She’s not nice’ and ‘She rubs people the wrong way.’ Well, we got a lot of shit done,” Lightfoot said during an interview in her office on the 5th Floor of City Hall, describing how her critics have portrayed her. “And I am proud. I’m very proud of it, unapologetically.”
She even played off that tension in a farewell address two days ago, after the interview, taking a swipe at pundits and the news media for “obsessing” about her temperament. Then, she said, the four-letter word she was fond of “was spelled h-o-p-e.”
After she steps down on Monday, leaving electoral politics entirely, her photo will be added to a wall in the lobby of City Hall featuring pictures of her 55 predecessors, where just one woman and two other brown faces are on display. Lightfoot even used her exit to reignite her long-running tension with the media by deciding to sit down with just one print media organization before she leaves office: POLITICO.
It’s one way she broadcasts that she lost reelection but not her right jab. In her mind, disruption was what voters bought when they elected her over longtime Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who also chairs the county Democratic Party.
“I came into government with a mandate of 75 percent of votes to break up the status quo and to make sure that I was doing things and putting ordinary residents of our city front and center,” Lightfoot said. “With that mandate, you’re going to disrupt the status quo. You’re going to make some people angry.”
Given how important public safety was in a mayor’s race that attracted nine Democratic candidates this year, Lightfoot said the party needs to figure out how to balance its themes. Progressive Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson won running to Lightfoot’s left and that of other Black mayors, including Eric Adams in New York City, on policing, so she said it’s critical to weave multiple issues together.
“As Democrats, we can’t just talk about police reform or criminal justice reform. What we leave out when we just focus on those two parts of a larger whole, is we leave out the victims and witnesses who have to be at the table,” said Lightfoot, who once served as president of an oversight board of Chicago’s police force before she was elected mayor.
“If we don’t talk about the grandmas, the moms, the kids, the families that are under siege in neighborhoods that are violent here and across the country … and we don’t advocate for them,” she said, “we are missing out entirely.”
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Chicago stood out, party leaders said, because of its diversity and strength in the labor movement. Although Democratic Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson ran to the left of Biden on policing, he was backed by the powerful Chicago Teachers Union.
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who is a co-chair of the DNC, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made a concerted lobbying campaign with the White House for the city. Pritzker and Duckworth organized an effort among Midwestern governors and senators and others to also lean on Biden.
“The Midwest is key to a victory in 2024, and there is no city better positioned to reach those voters than Chicago,” Duckworth said in the statement.
Many party leaders point to recent Democratic victories in Michigan and Wisconsin as proof of the Midwest’s strength for Democrats.
Last week, Wisconsin voters elected a liberal majority to its state Supreme Court, which will likely affect an upcoming court case challenging a ban on abortion.
Chicago and Atlanta have been the frontrunners among the three finalists for weeks. A convention in Atlanta would have highlighted the importance of Georgia, where Democrats have seen recent success in Senate and presidential elections.
But Chicago, a city split nearly evenly between Black, Latino and white residents, is also a union town, where Georgia is a right-to-work state.
After last week’s mayoral runoff in Chicago, Pritzker said he “absolutely” saw Johnson’s victory as enhancing the city’s chance of securing the convention. “Look, he brings a real excitement to the job, I think to the people of Chicago. And I think that’s being felt in Washington, D.C.”
The 2024 Democratic convention will be the city’s 12th time hosting the event. The first was in 1864 and the most recent was 1996. The most memorable, however, was the 1968 convention, which was marked by unrest.
The ’68 convention was held on the heels of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who had lived in Chicago with his family for a time to highlight the disparities of the city.
Chicago is a city well-versed in hosting big conventions.
It has 132 hotels and 43,462 hotel rooms in the business district and hundreds more hotels in the greater metropolitan area. It has a solid transportation system. And Pritzker has also pledged to make sure the DNC can walk away debt-free from a convention held in Chicago.
Pritzker, who self-funded his two gubernatorial campaigns, has enlisted numerous Illinois business executives to help fund the convention, which is expected to cost between $80 million to $100 million.
The major convention events will be held in the United Center, where the Chicago Bulls play. It’s the largest arena in North America, with 1.7 million square feet of arena and convention venue space, according to organizers. There’s also more than 26,000 square feet of hospitality space, which has been a draw for conventions in the past.
Other events would be held at McCormick Place, which has hosted nearly every American president since President John F. Kennedy at various events. McCormick Place also hosted more than 60 world leaders and heads of state as part of the 2012 NATO Summit.
As an example of how important the Midwest is for 2024, Republicans are set to gather in Milwaukee, Wis., an hour away from Chicago, from July 15-18, 2024.
The 2020 Democratic Convention held some events in Milwaukee but was largely virtual because of the pandemic.
Additional reporting from Christopher Cadelago and Sally Goldenberg.
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Similarly, Brandon Johnson, a Chicago union organizer, was hammered by his rival for previously leaning into the “defund the police” movement. But he stressed that his opponent Paul Vallas was not actually a Democrat, forcing him to repeatedly defend his credentials.
Both Protasiewicz and Johnson prevailed.
“Voters showed that they understand public safety to be much more nuanced than the way the Republicans try to frame it. That this is not just about having adequate law enforcement on the streets to promote public safety, but also about investing in mental health and substance use treatment and addressing poverty,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in an interview with POLITICO. “There are not just the short-term efforts to address crime, but also the long-term efforts.”
While both of Tuesday night’s races were nonpartisan, they did each contain a left vs. right ideological contrast that offered a temperature reading as to where voters stood on key issues. Johnson emphasized taxes on the ultrarich, while Protasiewicz played up protection for abortion rights as well as voters’ concerns about threats to U.S. democracy.
The through-line issue, however, was crime.
It wasn’t lost on state or national officials that had Johnson lost the race, they would have been forced to push back hard on the narrative that his “defund” position cost them the keys to City Hall. Instead, while concerns over crime did indeed dominate the race, voters weren’t buying solutions that simply called for adding more police. And they rejected the controversial police union that went hard after Johnson.
“The narrative coming out of the first election was that voters were scared out of their wits,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and pollster. “Now, after the last election, the story is that while voters are scared, they aren’t out of their wits.”
Pritzker, who helped raise critical money for TV ads in Protasiewicz’s race, said the GOP tactic to paint Democrats as soft on crime was also used in the midterms, and didn’t work then in Illinois and several key battleground states, either.
“We all got attacked on the simplistic vision of Republicans and we all are folks who believe you’ve got to address public safety in a nuanced and multifaceted fashion. We’ve said that to the voters and they responded,” Pritzker said.
“We saw it over and over again,” he added, pointing to the 2022 Democratic victories of Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin as well as his own in Illinois.
In Pritzker’s race last year, his conservative opponent, Darren Bailey, hammered the governor over Chicago’s persistent crime problem. Pritzker said polling showed crime was “an important issue” to voters, “but that didn’t mean they wanted to choose the more conservative or Republican candidate. That bore itself out.”
The same thing happened in Tuesday’s mayoral election in Chicago, said Pritzker, who did not endorse in the race that saw Mayor Lori Lightfoot shut out after the first round of voting. Her administration’s handling of crime was attacked by the eight candidates she faced in the first round, including Johnson and Vallas.
Vallas, a former public schools chief, latched on to people’s fears about carjackings in neighborhoods that hadn’t experienced it to the extent they do now. He proposed ramping up police officers on the streets and talked about opening schools for alternative programming for young adults.
Johnson, who had previously said defunding police was “a goal,” insisted during the race that he wasn’t suggesting taking funds away from police. He said he supported adding 200 detectives to solve crimes and funding social services programs that get to the heart of the crime problem.
The attention on Chicago and its handling of crime was on the radar of the national Democratic Party, too, with Biden weighing where the 2024 Democratic convention should be held. Chicago is a finalist, as are New York and Atlanta.
Pritzker called the Midwest “a blue wall” for Democrats, adding, “that was proven out last night. I do think that this puts us in the pole position to win the convention.”
Some in the Chicago contingent pushing their DNC bid had worried that Vallas winning the mayor’s race would complicate their efforts given critical remarks he had made about Chicago itself and a slew of top elected leaders, including Pritzker. They were heartened by the fact that Biden and DNC officials waited until the mayor’s race was over to decide.
For Biden, however, the greater impact is likely in Wisconsin, a state that’s central to his chances in 2024. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre connected the string of Democratic wins on abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
“Americans want the freedom to make reproductive health care decisions without government interference,” Jean-Pierre said. “Yet, though, you see that Republican elected officials are more committed than ever to attack those fundamental freedoms that Americans should have.”
Brian Stryker, a Democratic strategist who conducted polling for Protasiewicz, said the state’s 1849 abortion ban was very much top of mind for voters in Wisconsin. As were questions about whether the elected officials there would certify future contests. That Protasiewicz performed so well in suburban counties should serve as a potent signal to Democrats across the region, he said.
Garin agreed, but went even further.
“Wisconsin is evidence of a backlash against the MAGA power-grab and their assault on democracy and the rule of the people,” he said. “And Democrats in 2024 would be wise to tap into that.”
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Vallas and Johnson are vying to succeed incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost her reelection bid during the first round of the election Feb. 28.
In that contest, Vallas, the only white candidate among nine contenders, came in first with 33 percent of the vote, followed by Johnson at 22 percent and Lightfoot at 17 percent, propelling Vallas and Johnson to Tuesday’s runoff.
The outcome of the Chicago mayor’s race has been closely watched as Democrats across the country try to grapple with messaging over crime. Two years ago in New York, Eric Adams won his party’s nomination and, later, the general election running to the right of his fellow Democrats on criminal justice issues.
Vallas, 69, and Johnson, 47, played to their bases during the first round of the election, with Vallas on the right, courting moderates and Republicans in the nonpartisan race, and Johnson on the left securing support from Democratic Socialists.
They both steered their campaigns to the middle for Tuesday’s contest, trying to woo supporters of Lightfoot and Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who came in fourth during the first round.
Vallas and Johnson touted big-name endorsements in hopes of swaying voters. Johnson was backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Johnson also was endorsed by civil rights leader and Chicago resident Rev. Jesse Jackson.
For his part, Vallas was endorsed by Sen. Dick Durbin, popular former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and Tom Tunney, an alderman and chair of Chicago’s powerful Zoning Committee.
Both Vallas and Johnson also were embraced by powerful unions, which helped fuel their bases but also raised concerns among moderate Democrats about how they would lead.
Vallas is endorsed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, and Johnson is backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, for which he also worked. The CTU also funded Johnson’s campaign, donating more than $2.5 million to the effort. While Vallas accepted the FOP support, he didn’t take money from the organization.
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After besting seven other candidates in the February election, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson represent two polarizing visions on public safety and education. Vallas, a moderate Democrat and former public schools chief, ran almost entirely on addressing the city’s crime. To his left, Johnson, a progressive county commissioner, is backed by the city’s teachers union.
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“We’re not just passing out palm cards or endorsing, we are involved in the very embryonic stages of running a movement electoral contest that helps us build more people, ideas and energy into our quest for a truly just and equitable public education system in Chicago,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said in an interview.
“All of the things happening in our city, the violence, the unhoused crisis,” she said, “those are things that become intertwined with fully funded schools, smaller class sizes, a nurse and social worker in every building.”
The labor group wants to remake how the city government addresses housing, poverty and education, and it has built an independent political organization to push that mission. It has supported winning campaigns of progressive Democrats to the Chicago City Council, Illinois General Assembly and Congress — even though its picks for mayor in 2015 and 2019 lost to Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot.
In Brandon Johnson — a progressive county commissioner, former CTU organizer and teacher whose soaring oratory has been a hallmark of rallies and contract fights — the union’s critics see a takeover of the city’s politics.
“CTU already has outsized power compared to any other union or special interest group because unlike the police or the firefighters or transit workers, they have the right to strike,” said Forrest Claypool, a former Chicago schools chief who resigned from office amid a 2017 ethics scandal.
“They also have an outsized impact on working families who have no other choice on where to send their children,” said Claypool, who is supporting Johnson’s opponent, Paul Vallas. “That power, combined with a mayor who is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary, would make them a dangerous force.”
The union has proven to be a thorn for past mayors. Union work stoppages under Emanuel and Lightfoot in 2012, 2016, 2019 and 2022 infuriated city and corporate leaders who have sought to reform urban schools in ways favored by centrist Democrats.
But it also drew criticism over its refusal to return to in-person teaching during the pandemic as a protest for stricter district safety protocols that drew national attention — particularly after many suburban districts and private schools found ways to bring students back.
Now the union and its state and national affiliates have bankrolled Johnson’s campaign with millions of dollars, and committed up to $2 million more through a CTU plan to apportion a chunk of monthly member dues to union PACs. A roster of labor group members work or volunteer for Johnson’s campaign to advance the union’s formidable ground game.
Divisions over public safety and race were central campaign themes in the lead-up to Chicago’s nine-person Feb. 28 election that ousted Lightfoot, but the first round’s results only made things more complicated. By picking Vallas and Johnson, voters advanced two figures with divergent philosophies for the city that reflect a polarized electorate.
It also elevated deep divisions over education.
Although Vallas focused his campaign on public concerns about the city’s crime and Johnson’s history of supporting efforts to “defund” the police, whoever wins on Tuesday will have immense responsibility over a shrinking school district with troubled finances.
The election comes as Chicago schools, home to 322,000 students who are predominantly Black and Latino, stand to re-enter a period of financial turmoil that left officials relying on expensive borrowing to keep the lights on and make payroll not long ago.
The city is also decentralizing the power mayors once held over the Chicago Board of Education just as its latest contract with teachers expires in 2024. While the next mayor will still get to appoint a chief executive, they will begin to face members of a school board who are elected rather than appointed — a longtime CTU goal that marks an opening for the labor group to expand its influence.
A former Chicago Public Schools CEO, Vallas has won support from past school chiefs including Obama-era Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the city’s police union, many business leaders, the state’s charter school community, and a D.C.-based PAC affiliated with former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Test scores saw mixed results during Vallas’ Chicago tenure, though nearly 80 schools were opened, including charters, and Vallas helped land two collective bargaining agreements. Vallas even drew praise from then-President Bill Clinton.
But the district failed to contribute to teacher pension payments and instead used the money for other expenses, seeding financial problems that still loom over its balance sheet. Vallas also embarked on a system where staff and administrators at low-performing schools were fired and dozens of campuses were ultimately closed.
Vallas then left Chicago to oversee troubled school systems in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Haiti, where he similarly drew praise and criticism.
Vallas said that as mayor he would focus on visiting schools and going to union meetings — and negotiating directly with union officials, even after a contract is signed.
“We would regularly, monthly, talk about issues and to kind of head off grievances before they were filed,” he told POLITICO about his approach.
But overall, many prominent Democrats are split on the race.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who broke with Lightfoot to support teachers during the 2019 contract fight that culminated with an 11-day strike, rank among a list of progressives backing Johnson. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and former Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) have endorsed Vallas.
To some influential labor figures, CTU’s trajectory is obvious.
“I would argue that the CTU has won already,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in an interview.
“Before Brandon was a candidate, what I heard from journalists was that CTU was disconnected from the community and they didn’t have the support that they used to have,” Weingarten said. “If that was true, then Brandon would not have gotten as far as he’s gotten. CTU has a tremendous network, there’s tremendous engagement, and CTU clearly helped Brandon get to where he’s gotten.”
The possibility of Johnson as mayor has some education watchers concerned he would be controlled by the CTU and realign the mayor’s office to the union’s causes.
“I don’t recall anywhere in the country where a paid organizer, someone for any union group, now having the keys to the executive office,” said Chicago City Council member Tom Tunney, a Democrat who is backing Vallas. “I just really think there needs to be a balance of power there.”
Johnson dismisses concerns that he would have a difficult time managing his relationship with the CTU.
“I’m going to be the mayor for the city of Chicago for everyone. It’s how I got here. It’s about being collaborative,” he told attendees at a City Club of Chicago luncheon last week.
“As the mayor of the city of Chicago, everyone should get what they deserve,” Johnson said. “No one should lose at the expense of someone else winning. That is my philosophy. And that’s how I’m going to approach every negotiation.”
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But what’s gone largely unsaid — at least officially — is the governor’s own riches.
JB Pritzker, a billionaire with presidential potential, is a noted philanthropist and a prolific Democratic donor who cut checks last year for incumbent governors like Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and the Democratic parties in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Pritzker’s team is hoping to lure the party to Chicago with what’s essentially a financially risk-free 2024 convention. Federal funds don’t generally cover conventions, though security for the U.S. Secret Service is funded through a federal grant for as much as $50 million to pay for, among other things, additional police presence. So having a billionaire governor as a stopgap could be alluring.
“The governor has spoken directly to Joe Biden and committed that Chicago has the ability to fund the convention,” Natalie Edelstein, a spokesperson for the Chicago bid, told POLITICO.
Conventions are costly affairs. When the 2012 Democratic convention wrapped, Democrats still owed money on everything from operational expenses to construction work and modifications made to the Time Warner Cable Arena. To deal with the $8 million bill, the city of Charlotte secured a $10 million line of credit from Duke Energy, an electric utility in the region. But Democrats didn’t repay Duke, which claimed the money as a business expense, drawing criticism for leaving shareholders to foot the bill.
Those organizing Chicago’s bid expect the price tag to run between $80 million and $100 million.
A priority for Chicago and Atlanta is fundraising, which relies on four pillars: organized labor, national corporations, political donors and local businesses and leaders.
“If one of those entities is not participating, it becomes almost impossible to fundraise,” said a Democratic strategist who’s consulted on conventions.
President Joe Biden has already sought to nudge his party south, pushing South Carolina up the Democratic presidential nominating calendar, and awarding the convention to Atlanta would bring more attention to Georgia, which swung his way in 2020. Labor leaders in New York have also tried to spike Atlanta over its dearth of unionized hotels and the idea that such a pro-union president would take the convention to a right-to-work state.
Still, some Midwestern Democratic elected officials have recommended Chicago to the DNC, according to letters written by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and others.
A potential strike among food workers at Chicago’s United Center, which would be the centerpiece location of the convention, caused some recent concern about the viability of the bid. But the tensions appear to be close to a resolution. UNITE HERE Local 1 and Levy Restaurants have reached a tentative agreement, and union members are expected to ratify it in the coming days.
The effort to bring the Democratic convention to Chicago is also reminiscent of the city’s business community stepping up in 2009 for an ill-fated bid for the 2016 Olympic Games.
But another undercurrent around Chicago’s push for 2024 attention is the persistent concern about the city’s crime, which upended the mayor’s race this winter. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was seen as a strong voice to represent the city in a convention, was bumped from the runoff, leaving two candidates at the extreme ends of the Democratic Party about public safety and policing.
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Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) supported Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in last week’s election but hasn’t announced anything about the April 4 runoff. Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Sen. Dick Durbin haven’t weighed in on the race at all.
Some in the party say neither option is particularly compelling.
“Most Democrats look at the two choices and in an extreme sense they are choices between a Republican and a socialist,” said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist and veteran of Illinois politics. ”There’s not a Joe Biden mainstream Democrat running for mayor of Chicago.”
The race to oust Lightfoot focused almost entirely on the city’s crime. And out of a field of nine candidates, Chicagoans last week picked Paul Vallas, a police union-backed former Chicago Public Schools executive, and Brandon Johnson, a progressive Cook County commissioner who has praised the “defund the police” movement.
Vallas has also been dogged by his past statements opposing abortion rights and his basic credentials of declaring himself a Democrat while some voters are turned off by the support Johnson is getting from the Chicago Teachers Union.
“Paul Vallas will say he’s a lifelong Democrat and Brandon Johnson will say the same thing. But that’s not what their records would show,” Giangreco added, comparing the dilemma confronting politicians to one facing many Chicago voters who don’t yet identify with either option. “There’s nobody who meets their politics who made the runoff.”
Neither Duckworth nor Durbin’s teams would say who or even if their bosses will endorse. Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, who represents a portion of Chicago, said he’s “not sure” who he’ll support. And Pritzker, like the others, wants to see the race further play out.
For Biden, Chicago’s mayoral contest could influence his own political future, beyond setting a message about the party’s larger approach to policing and big-city crime. Chicago is a finalist for the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Both Vallas and Johnson have said they would support the convention in Chicago. But as Biden nears a decision to run for reelection, he’ll have to factor how their records might prod divisions in the party and how easily Republicans can weaponize the politics.
There was a chance the president might’ve endorsed in the mayor’s race in Chicago, where Biden’s blessing would have been a bigger coup than in Los Angeles given it’s home to former President Barack Obama. The president’s advisers had been in contact with Lightfoot’s campaign as well as others leading up to last week’s election and her team specifically asked for his endorsement, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
Vallas has yet to face the kind of sustained attacks on his ideology that Bass’ opponent in the race — wealthy developer Caruso, a former longtime Republican — did.
And even the appearance of Biden wading in could help.
Johnson traveled to Selma, Ala., over the weekend for an event commemorating “Bloody Sunday.” Johnson didn’t secure an endorsement, but he had a “brief discussion,” according to a person close to the campaign. Johnson was introduced to him by Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.).
A few national figures are stepping up. Reps. Jim Clyburn, who’s fundraising for Johnson, and Jan Schakowsky are expected to endorse Johnson, the person knowledgeable about the campaign said.
As the candidates prepare for their first debate Wednesday, Biden himself is taking steps to appear stronger on crime.
He has already called for tens of billions of dollars to bolster law enforcement and crime prevention and is expected to seek more in his budget blueprint this week. Last week, Biden said he would not veto a GOP-backed bill to repeal changes local Washington, D.C., lawmakers approved to lower certain criminal penalties.
Congressional Republicans need to “commit here and now to joining with President Biden — not obstructing him — in fighting the rising crime rate he inherited,” Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.
“They should forcefully condemn their colleagues who are calling for defunding the FBI and the ATF,” Bates said. “And they need to get with the program on gun crime by finally dropping their opposition to an assault weapons ban. … This isn’t a game, it’s life and death.”
In Chicago, Vallas’ push for stronger policing resonated with voters even as he took criticism in the deep-blue city for his ties to conservative-leaning outfits like Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police. He wants to see hundreds more police officers on the street, a view Lightfoot and other candidates swung to ahead of the first round of the election.
“Defund is an issue,” said Ron Holmes, a political strategist in Illinois who has worked on several statewide campaigns. “But palling around with certain members of the FOP is an issue too, and therein lies the problem: They are both going to paint each other as extremists. So for those of us that didn’t vote for either during the first round, it’s critical that we have a substantive campaign to see who will govern on behalf of the majority of Chicagoans.”
Johnson, who is Black, has said his policy platform does not support defunding the police and instead calls for training and promoting 200 detectives. But his previous comments — including that “defund” isn’t just “a slogan. It’s an actual real political goal” — has spooked some national figures.
“They’re going to have to articulate and direct their message,” Pritzker said of Johnson and Vallas last week. “What is their primary message? And [is it] going to be, you know, focused on what are they going to do about education? What are they going to do about health care? What are they going to do about public safety? What are they going to do about creating jobs? Those are all important things that I don’t think have been fully fleshed out by either one of those candidates.”
Outside of the debate about public safety, Vallas’ team has sought to highlight past support he’s earned from Democratic stalwart organizations, including groups that advocate for abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
Aides to Vallas, who is white, argue that his close associations and prior work with well-known Chicago Democrats will diffuse concerns about his political affiliation. And endorsements like the one he got last week from former Secretary of State Jesse White — who is Black, and long considered the most popular Democrat in Illinois — will do more to help him win than touting national figures, Biden included.
“What we are focused on is the local support that’s growing everyday and it’s pretty diverse across the city,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Vallas.
Trippi added, the “defund” charges against Johnson should repel Democrats from closing ranks around him. “You do have someone who has talked about defunding and I just don’t know why any national people would get into that debate,” he said.
Jackson, who has also endorsed Johnson, acknowledged that Johnson needed to find a good answer to accusations from the right.
“He’ll have to make it clear, the spirit of it versus the actual words,” Jackson said in an interview. “Everyone knows we need safer streets. The spirit of it is to put more money into academic programs. In the short-term, we need to make sure we’re solving crimes. He stands for that.”
There are issues that extend beyond crime and personal loyalty, and race is playing out in the contest a well. And now, Vallas and Johnson are both trying to attract voters and endorsements from the establishment Black wards that supported Lightfoot.
Illinois Reps. Danny Davis and Delia Ramirez also have endorsed Johnson, but Trippi argued that the former secretary of state’s backing is “far more important than any national figure.”
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Things aren’t any easier for Brandon Johnson, Vallas’ Black, left-leaning rival in the April 4 runoff, who won the second spot with 21 percent — and a radically different coalition to go with his perspective on crime, policing and education.
The Cook County commissioner’s best opening to pull in a large chunk of voters will be among the 17 percent who voted for Lightfoot. Yet that still leaves him scavenging in areas like moderate Latino-majority wards and even his home precinct.
“Race is one of the most definitive predictors in how an area votes in Chicago, like in many other areas,” said Frank Calabrese, an independent political consultant who has studied several campaigns in Illinois. “If Vallas is doing 30, 35, 40 percent in Black wards, that means he’s doing really well.”
How Vallas wins
Vallas didn’t even come close to 30 percent numbers in most Black-majority wards on Election Day. And although that was a contest divided among nine candidates, he typically landed third or fourth place in those areas — several points behind Johnson, and where Lightfoot did her best.
However, Vallas, who got the endorsement of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and ran a tough-on-crime campaign, did well with voters in areas that resoundingly rejected the incumbent mayor: white-majority wards on the city’s North and Southwest sides, where a mix of wealthy families and civil service workers like police officers or firefighters live.
The prime pockets of voters available to Vallas are those who went for Willie Wilson, a prominent Black conservative businessperson who also ran for mayor on a police-heavy platform. In the handful of majority-Black precincts Wilson captured, he got up to 42 percent of the vote, and came in second or third in many others — capturing voters unlikely to swing left to Johnson without a lot of convincing.
What may bridge Vallas’ shortfall with Black voters is the outpouring of support he’s winning from well-known Black Democratic political figures, including former Secretary of State Jesse White and several respected City Council members.
“It’s a Black man running against a white man when it comes down to Black wards,” Calabrese said of Johnson. “That being said, Black residents… care about crime and quality of life issues at the same level, if not more than other parts of the city. Vallas is going to have a resonating message.”
Latinos and Asian voters are big unknowns
Demographically, the city is split evenly among white, Black and Latino residents, but it doesn’t break down that way when it comes to who actually shows up to cast ballots.
Despite having a Latino candidate on the ballot in García, participation among Latino voters “was abysmal” last week, said Jaime Dominguez, a Northwestern professor who worked on a rare poll with BSP Research weighted toward measuring Black and Latino voters.
The demographic already does not vote in droves, he said, and it didn’t help that Garcia entered the race late and missed out on big union support, like Johnson’s backing from the Chicago Teachers Union. A large share of Latino voters were still undecided leading before Election Day last week.
Vallas can keep building off of the Latino votes he already won, Dominguez and Calabrese said. The frontrunner clinched several majority-Latino wards last week, and placed second in other moderate areas receptive to his law-and-order messaging.
“I’ll be honest with you — I think that some people think Vallas is a Latino last name,” Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said in an interview, laughing. As his team went door-to-door in majority-Latino communities, that comment came up “quite a lot.”
Then there are Asian American voters, who have a stronger stake in Chicago politics this cycle, after post-2020 redistricting led to Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods becoming a slightly majority Asian ward, which is also 20 percent Latino and 25 percent white. Vallas came away with 58 percent of the vote there, while Johnson and Garcia had about 13 percent each.
This shows the division among Asian communities on the issue of public safety, said Grace Pai, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Chicago. Progressives want non-police options to address a rise in general violence and anti-Asian attacks, while she said others want more law enforcement present to protect businesses and patrol. And both sides are vocal within the communities that comprise about 7 percent of the city.
Johnson had made more of a concerted effort than Vallas to reach out to Asian American surrogates during the campaign’s initial stages, she said.
What’s also unclear is how Johnson’s aspirations of decreasing police funding will ring with a broader set of voters, though he distanced himself from those remarks before last week’s election.
“Whether you’re Latino, Caucasian, African American — public safety is resonating,” Ald. Gil Villegas, who was endorsed by García and is heading to a runoff of his own, said in an interview. “If you’re not speaking about that… regardless of your ethnicity or your gender, people want to feel safe. Quality of life is a big issue.”
How Johnson wins
One analysis shows Vallas could pick up García’s Latino voters and Johnson could consolidate the Black vote — but low Hispanic voter turnout and incoming endorsements from Black and Latino leaders will blur the election picture.
Johnson won over Ramirez-Rosa’s ward on the Northwest Side, which is more than half Latino and has a significant white population, by a high margin — making the area more of an exception among the city’s Latinos.
The alderman endorsed Johnson and was confident about his ability to attract Latino voters in the runoffs. Ramirez-Rosa pointed to Johnson’s use of Spanish-language advertising, as well as recent wins from progressive Latinos, including himself and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who also endorsed Johnson.
Now, Johnson faces challenges in keeping up appeal with the progressives he won over while not turning off Latinos by going too far to the left, Dominguez said. Surrogates for either candidate will make a large difference during the runoff campaign process, and some believe Latino leaders — including García — will eventually back Johnson.
Johnson making the runoff shows the potential success of a candidate running on a nuanced public safety plan, said Patrice James, founding director of the Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative, recently founded to promote Black interests in the state.
Black voters are not only sophisticated, James said, but have “long memories” of Chicago’s lack of investment in their communities — such as former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s controversial shuttering of 50 schools in mostly Black neighborhoods. Vallas has his own history with school closures when he led the system in the 1990s.
“They remember disinvestment and the fallout of what it means when schools close in your neighborhood and how that impacts home values,” she said. “It’s no secret Johnson is about community. … I think that will resonate with a lot of voters.”
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Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019, came under fire from voters and her eight challengers for her handling of crime in Chicago.
On Tuesday night, Lightfoot conceded after gaining about 17% of the vote, coming in third behind former public schools chief Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who will face off in a runoff. She was the first elected Chicago mayor to lose reelection since Jane Byrne in 1983.
When it comes to crime, mayors are “the closest to the problem” Adams said Sunday, calling public safety “a prerequisite to prosperity.”
“That is why we’re zero-focused, double-digit decrease in shooters, double-digit decrease in homicides,” Adams said. “We have witnessed this year, particularly in the month of February, all of our index crimes is low, low for the entire year.”
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