We hoped to hear in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s speech announcing his reelection bid that he’d learned something from the chaotic three-plus years in which he’s served.
What we got on Sunday was the left-wing version of what we saw last week from President Donald Trump in Dallas: divisiveness, combined with the demonization of opponents.
Did the mayor mention any of the many announced candidates running against him by name on Sunday as he kicked off his campaign? He did not. The one person he identified by name — more than once — was Michael Sacks, the billionaire private-equity executive who has been an active and hardworking participant in Chicago civic life for the past two decades.
“When you hear that someone wants to be your mayor and they claim to be progressive but they take money from AIPAC and Michael Sacks and corporate interests and shell PACs, you know who has the power. It’s not you,” Johnson proclaimed to hundreds of supporters.
That “someone” clearly was referring to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, the perceived front-runner at this early stage in the race, but Johnson didn’t have the guts to call him out by name. Instead, he preferred to make it appear as if he’s running against Sacks, who along with other wealthy Chicagoans has contributed substantially to Giannoulias.
Giannoulias hasn’t taken a dime from AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — in this campaign, but that didn’t stop the mayor from attempting to tie Giannoulias to the misery in the Middle East. He was doing this for the benefit of young progressives for whom the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel remains an animating issue.
We get the hardball nature of Chicago politics, but inserting AIPAC into a race in which it is not participating, never mind the antisemitic implication of demonizing Sacks and AIPAC, is unseemly even for this city. A sitting Chicago mayor should not stoop this low even in a political campaign.
Apparently, such Trump-like attack tactics are what this mayor feels he must use when the record of his term is one of stasis and division. We’ve seen Johnson spend virtually his entire time in office attempting to tick off items on progressives’ wish list, largely unsuccessfully.
These included a bevy of taxes on corporations or wealthy individuals, infamously listed in a report from Johnson allies issued just prior to his taking office titled, “First We Get the Money.” The vast majority of those levies required authorization from Springfield, which never came despite entreaties from Johnson. The last on the list — reviving and dramatically increasing the so-called head tax on Chicago jobs provided by its largest private-sector employers — was shot down by the council last year despite a push from Johnson so intense that he brought the city to the brink of a government shutdown.
Even an early victory for him — the gradual elimination of the subminimum wage for tipped workers — was paused earlier this year by a City Council alarmed by the closure of neighborhood restaurants.
The closest Johnson came on Sunday to acknowledging his lack of success was to say “the road traveled has not always been smooth.”
That is putting it mildly. The unpopularity of this administration has managed against the odds to create a working majority of aldermen who have forged something akin to a commonsense caucus, defeating many of the mayor’s initiatives. Instead of trying to find common ground with some of them and create his own working majority, Johnson derides them as the “corporate caucus.”
He uses that term generally as a slur and not only in reference to political opponents but also including media outlets that have the temerity to probe his priorities and uncover the dysfunction in his government.
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Again, a Trumpian way of behaving.
So, returning to what we said at the outset, what has the mayor learned from all this resistance to his agenda? At least based on Sunday’s performance, his primary takeaway is to push for more of the same and castigate those standing in the way in terms that imply they don’t want what’s best for Chicago just as much as he does.
Most of all, that sort of finger-pointing is where this mayor has fallen so short during his time in office. We’ve said it before, but running a big city isn’t a job that lends itself to an extreme ideological lens. It is fundamentally a management challenge — an extremely difficult one for any mayor, we acknowledge, particularly for a city as fiscally stressed as Chicago. It calls for pragmatism and flexibility.
As he tries to convince Chicagoans another four years wouldn’t be as gridlocked and confidence-sapping as these last three-plus years have been, Johnson’s first task should be to treat those who disagree with him as just that. People who disagree with him. Not evildoers. Not people with bad intentions.
Just fellow Chicagoans, who love the city, too, and want it stabilized and revived.
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