The 10-second post looked normal, like almost anything passing by on another mindless scroll.
But as Mayor Brandon Johnson cracked a joke with a social media influencer interviewing him in front of the Chicago skyline, a tag near the caption stuck out: “Paid partnership.”
That made Johnson the first announced or likely candidate in Chicago’s next mayoral election to acknowledge paying a content creator to post a political video supporting him.
The disclosure late last month marks the arrival of a new form of campaign advertising in a Chicago election. The decision by Johnson — who has not yet officially launched a 2027 mayoral bid — is a sign the mayor believes short-video influencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok hold rising, largely untapped sway over voters as he weighs a reelection run. It’s a strategy that raises thorny questions about compensation and disclosure but one, Johnson campaign director Christian Perry said, that will only grow more common.
“Any campaign worth their salt will be trying to figure out: In the same way you pay for airtime, you pay for screen time,” Perry told the Tribune. “This is not anything nefarious, new or unsavory. This is where people are getting their news and information.”
The campaign has so far only paid for posts from one creator, according to Perry — a drop in the overflowing bucket of online discourse about the mayor. Several other content creators sharing online support for Johnson told the Tribune they had not been paid, with some adding they’ve never even had contact with his team.
Still, for all candidates, it’s a largely unregulated space that opens the door to overly fawning coverage, or even misinformation. Social media platforms do little to help viewers distinguish a campaign’s unpaid supporters from its paid contractors, and some politicians have turned to influencers to get their message out without facing the scrutiny and pesky questions provided by more traditional news outlets.
In Johnson’s own paid and unpaid videos with supportive creators, he does not face challenging questions — instead, he’s given largely unmitigated opportunities to show his personality, tout his accomplishments and jab back at criticism.
Johnson himself continues to regularly take questions from the press. Multiple times a week, he posts clips from news conferences — often confrontational exchanges with reporters — to his own accounts. His following on short-video platforms skyrocketed last fall as he forcefully condemned President Donald Trump and the stepped-up federal immigration enforcement in the city, a rise that coincided with a wave of support from online progressives. His Instagram account now boasts over 630,000 followers, making it a key mode of communication for the mayor.
Perry said creators deserve to earn money for their work, but declined to say how much the Johnson campaign paid the creator of the video used in the 10-second post, Rebecca Lehmann, though upcoming campaign finance reports will likely disclose the amount.
Lehmann, who has now posted five videos marked as “paid partnerships” involving the mayor, including three clips from a friendly one-on-one interview, said in a video posted Friday morning that she wanted to be transparent about the compensation.
“If you think that colors anything I’m going to say next, you know, well, that’s fair,” she said in the video. “My stance is that I’m not for any particular candidate; I am for Chicago.”
In a statement to the Tribune later Friday, she said she was offered the opportunity to interview the mayor, “and I was lucky enough to be fairly compensated for the work that involved.”
“Content creation is skilled work, after all. I’ve been transparent about how I approached it as a creator, and handled it with care knowing that it would generate a discussion,” she wrote. “Beyond that, I’m going to let the content speak for itself.”
In the weeks before that video was posted, Johnson downplayed the prospect of paid-influencer support. He said last month he was not aware of influencers being paid to share flattering videos about him.
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“But clearly you are noticing that there are more people who are talking me up,” he said several days before the first video marked as a paid partnership was posted. “Quite frankly, it’s been organic, and I think it’s a testament to how I believe people are responding to the moment.”
Then, just hours before that video went up, Perry told the Tribune the campaign did not yet know whether it would pay for such posts, though he said that could soon change and called working with content creators a top priority.
“That decision hasn’t been made,” he said at the time. “Whether or not we pay or not remains to be seen. Whether or not we leverage organizers who know how to organize in the digital space, heck yeah, we’re going to do that.”
Earlier last month, Johnson’s campaign had brought together a group of popular Chicago content creators for two days of meetings and interviews with Johnson allies and the mayor himself. Among them was progressive influencer Rachel Cohen, who has posted six Johnson-supporting videos to her more than 650,000 followers in recent weeks.
“If Brandon Johnson runs for reelection, I am all in for him,” Cohen says at the start of one video, her face filling the screen. “I do not support candidates lightly.”
Cohen said she was offered a “basic and pretty low stipend” for the work but declined it, fearing people would discount her support for Johnson if she took the money. The well-established influencer called it a privilege that she didn’t need to accept the money for the work because of her financial security. Johnson, who she argued is Chicago’s “most progressive mayor since Harold Washington,” will need all the support he can get as he takes on candidates with far more money from special interests, she said.
“The notion that there’s going to be a more progressive or more transformative mayor is, I think, deeply misguided,” she said.
Though she said she didn’t accept any cash from the Johnson campaign, Cohen argued it can be appropriate for content creators to accept money, so long as they disclose that payment, likening the work to that of a paid graphic designer. Johnson’s campaign had told her she would be required to disclose any posts that resulted from the two days of work if she took the stipend, she added.
For political influencers like her who post videos lasting seconds or minutes, navigating compensation is a “Wild West” full of “blurry lines,” Cohen said — but one she believes campaigns are increasingly headed toward.
“I don’t think we have a good way of dealing with it,” she said.
Joanna Klonsky, a veteran Chicago campaign strategist who helped steer former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s campaigns, said the 2027 mayoral race will be the first in the city where content creators play a key role. To voters, she said, a favorite influencer seems more authentic.
“These influencers can give the vibe of being someone you know, someone on your block, someone you might meet at the bar, who cares about the teams that you care about,” she said. “It’s very different from a mainstream media reporter.”
Such ads will become a necessary way to reach voters, especially young ones, she said.
“That’s just the reality of how campaign advertising works … of course that’s where campaigns are going to have to go,” Klonsky said. “In a way it’s a democratizing force, it just also raises a lot of complicated questions.”
Among them: the near-total absence of rules governing paid political posts on social media. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok technically require users to label paid advertisements, but the rules often go unenforced, and few laws govern such ads the way spots on TV, billboards and flyers are regulated. U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, introduced legislation last month that would require clear disclaimers on paid political posts by social media influencers.
While it may be a new phenomenon for Chicago’s mayoral race, influencers have been part of the broader political landscape for several years. In 2024, Democrats credentialed more than 200 content creators and social media influencers for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago for the first time. And earlier this year, national news outlets noted that dark money groups in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District Democratic primary offered influencers $1,500 for posts attacking certain candidates.
Many posts shaping how Chicagoans see the mayoral race, meanwhile, have no connection to any campaign — paid or not.
Progressive content creator Tatyana Najee Woods had long focused on federal politics, building a following of more than 165,000 across her accounts. She turned her attention to City Hall last month after seeing news of Johnson opponents blocking his proposal for a nonbinding ballot referendum asking general election voters whether the city should adopt a millionaire tax.
She has since begun posting brief analyses of every sitting alderman, detailing their wards and key votes, that have garnered more than a million views combined. Each one starts the same way: “Chicago doesn’t have a mayor problem. Chicago has an aldermen problem.”
“People scroll all day. I try to make a lot of information scrollable and digestible,” she told the Tribune. “People crave information; they just don’t know where to get it from.”
Researching, outlining, shooting and editing such videos is hard work, and creators should be compensated for it, Woods said. She added that it isn’t wrong for creators to get paid so long as the posts reflect their own values, and she predicted paid content will only become more common.
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A full-time creator, Woods said she makes money through livestreams, follower donations and small per-view payments from social media platforms. Despite her vocal support for Johnson, she said she has never met the mayor and is not being paid.
“I didn’t know the man, I just like his policy,” Woods said. “I would never sell my soul. It’s purely organic with me. I don’t do anything that will go against my morals.”
Perry pointed to Woods’ videos as an example of unsolicited online support boosting Johnson’s image, though he said he also thinks it’s fair to pay creators for their time.
“I think traditional media, legacy media, has legitimate frustration — I wouldn’t even say legitimate, I retract that — has frustrations with what social media has done to help people get their news,” he said. “I think those social frustrations are on full display when you have a mayor that not only energizes people but inspires hope.”
Campaigns also turn to creators because campaign organizations are often not good at handling social media, said Andrew Gunderman, founder of Renowned Chicago, a group that convenes creators for hosted events and connects them with brands and elected officials, among others.
“It’s pretty obvious that campaigns just have no idea what they’re doing on a content creation side,” Gunderman said.
Some politicians have proven effective in spurring content by offering to meet with creators, he said. He cited Gov. JB Pritzker, who hosted a bill signing Friday afternoon attended by both Lehmann and Woods focused on menopause awareness and domestic violence protections Friday afternoon.
Most campaigns don’t have enough money to meaningfully pay creators, he said. But the most successful ones don’t exchange money, he said — they’re giving creators status.
“They are usually just ordinary people who are looking for really cool things that they can show to their friends,” he said.