The country’s most powerful teachers’ union has the keys to the Chicago mayor’s office.
Now what?
Brandon Johnson, a longtime Chicago Teachers Union activist, pulled off an amazing come-from-behind victory to edge out incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the February primary, and on April 4 he defeated former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas to become the 57th mayor of Chicago. As the numbers stand now, Johnson won by an incredibly narrow margin: 51.4% to 48.6%.
But still – a win’s a win. The city is divided, with 49% of Chicago voters signaling a lack of support for the CTU’s political agenda.
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With Johnson and his CTU backers taking the reins, there’s no history to tell us what happens next. A teachers’ union has never taken control of the mayor’s office in one of the biggest cities in the U.S. But we can guess about Chicago’s future.
To be sure, some Vallas voters and others who see CTU for what it is – a power-hungry political machine rife with corruption – may feel dejected. Some may even make the painful choice to leave this beautiful city. Only time will tell how the business community will react, but Johnson’s campaign promise to gin up $800 million in new revenues by reimplementing the city’s head tax on employers certainly won’t help the city as businesses decide where to plant roots or whether to stay. Trade unions and business leaders here backed Vallas, who promised to be a sensible manager of the city’s finances.
Johnson, on the other hand, seemed to change, adjust and adapt major parts of his platform as he went.
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He was a vocal advocate of the movement to defund the police in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, calling the defund movement an "actual, real political goal." When he received heat during the election over this position, he responded by saying, "I said it was a political goal. I never said it was mine."
While New York City Mayor Eric Adams sounded like a voice of reason recently on the need to encourage public school students to show proficiency instead of walking away from education metrics, Brandon Johnson has taken a different path, boasting he doesn’t believe in tests or test prep, grades or even homework. Johnson wants to increase funding for every CPS school, even though one-third of them are half full because CTU demanded the district not be allowed to shutter underused buildings.
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More important than managing the buildings is fixing what happens in them. The district is failing Chicago students currently. Nearly 80% of Chicago 11th graders could not read or perform math at grade level, according to state data from 2022. Just 33% of Chicagoans are satisfied with public education in the city – but failing public schools is Johnson and the CTU’s only educational answer.
While Johnson and the CTU say the $800 million in new revenue will fix city finances, Chicago voters got a glimpse of how the mayor-elect handles his own finances. Johnson was thousands of dollars behind in water and sewer bills and defaulted on a Capitol One credit card after failing to make payments. One of Johnson’s campaign promises on his website is eliminating Chicago’s debt. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone struggles from time to time, but the fact is Johnson’s financial history is relevant because soon he’ll be in charge of the finances for an entire city.
What happened in Chicago is shocking to many, but to folks who follow local politics it wasn’t surprising CTU was able to mobilize and spend its way to victory. The Second City was the first to make waves with the election of a mayor who’s even farther to the ideological left than his predecessor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot. But we won’t be the last place where teachers unions invest heavily to get wins. Dallas, Nashville and Philadelphia all have mayoral elections coming up later this year.
Chicago may be a harbinger of things to come in other big cities.
