The contest to run Chicago, a city that last elected a Republican mayor nearly a century ago, has boiled down to a battle between the progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic party.
Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas present clashing approaches to crime and policing, public education and taxes as they meet in a run-off on Tuesday to become mayor of the third-largest city in the US.
Johnson has been endorsed by prominent progressive Senator Bernie Sanders, while wealthy Republicans and establishment Chicago politicians have flocked to Vallas. Each man is backed by a different local union.
Vallas has sought to paint Johnson as a radical, while Johnson has played up an interview clip from 2009 of Vallas saying that he is “more of a Republican”. They are locked in a dead heat — each with 44 per cent of the vote — according to a poll on Tuesday by Northwestern University. Only 12 per cent were undecided.
“These two candidates represent very distinct viewpoints, constituencies and very distinct backgrounds,” said Chris Mooney, a political scientist at University of Illinois at Chicago. “Even in the same party you can have these very, very different people.”
You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.
Vallas and Johnson were the top two finishers in a field of nine candidates last month, with Vallas claiming 33 per cent of the vote compared to Johnson’s 22 per cent. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a political novice who swept into office in 2019 on a landslide, failed to make the April 4 run-off after four years of alienating opponents and supporters alike.
Vallas, 69, the grandson of Greek immigrants, grew up in a neighbourhood on Chicago’s far South Side where his family owned a restaurant. Johnson, 47, is the son of a pastor and one of 10 siblings.
Vallas is white and Johnson is black, a factor that plays a role in elections in the most heavily segregated big city in the US. The Northwestern poll found that among black registered voters, 55 per cent favour Johnson, compared to 28 per cent for Vallas. White registered voters split 51 per cent in favour of Vallas and 42 per cent for Johnson. Latino registered voters preferred Vallas 46 per cent to 35 per cent, and about one-third of them thought Vallas was a Latino name.
“The wild card on April 4 is the Latino vote,” said Northwestern political science professor Jaime Domínguez.
The issue of crime has dominated the race, with the poll finding that 50 per cent of registered voters listed it as their most important issue. Homicides have risen since Lightfoot took office in 2019, before dropping last year, and some other types of crimes, like carjacking, have increased as well.
While Chicago has struggled with violent crime for years in low-income neighbourhoods populated by black and Latino residents, it has become a political issue in this election because of “the location”, said Evan McKenzie, also a professor of political science at UIC. “When it was isolated in other neighbourhoods and the [central business district] was safe, . . . people didn’t worry about it so much.”
Vallas has campaigned on law and order, repeatedly saying his opponent wants to defund the police, which three years ago Johnson called a “political goal”. He has since distanced himself from the remark, saying he plans to hire additional detectives to improve solve rates and will leave the police department’s budget unchanged.
Vallas, on the other hand, has said he will swell the ranks of police with “hundreds” of retired officers who will return to work if he becomes mayor. He has the backing of the city’s police union. However, he was forced to condemn the remarks of union president John Catanzara last week after Catanzara told The New York Times that up to 1,000 officers would quit if Johnson were elected, leading to “blood in the streets”.
Johnson, too, is benefiting from the money and ground-game that accompany union support, as the homegrown candidate of the Chicago Teachers Union. The union launched a strike in 2012 against then-mayor Rahm Emanuel that set the template for strikes by teachers across the US over the next decade. Johnson started his career as a public school teacher and eventually became a CTU organiser. He is opposed to adding charter schools in Chicago and helped fight for an elected school board, free of mayoral control.
Vallas’s background is also in education. Before his run for office, he was best known to Chicago residents for his six-year stint starting in 1995 as the Chicago Public Schools’ first chief executive, after then-mayor Richard M. Daley moved him there from his job as city budget director. He championed charter schools and educational vouchers, policies typically favoured by centrists and conservatives.
The men also differ in their approach to taxes. Both have said they want to avoid raising property taxes, but Vallas has said that the city’s budget can be balanced without new revenue. Johnson, by contrast, has proposed an $800mn tax plan that would restore a “head tax” repealed in 2014 that charges employers $4 for each employee.
The divide between the candidates is clear in their endorsements and fundraising. At a rally in Chicago on Thursday, Sanders said Johnson’s campaign “was about bringing the working-class together to make sure we have a government that works for all”. Johnson has raised $11mn, a little over a fifth from CTU, and been endorsed by another well-known progressive, Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Vallas, meanwhile, has racked up endorsements from Illinois political stalwarts like Senator Dick Durbin and former secretary of state Jesse White, while hiring remnants of the Daley political machine that once dominated Democratic politics in the city. He also has been backed by prominent wealthy Republicans, including Ken Griffin, Sam Zell and Ron Gidwitz. He has raised $18mn.
Delmarie Cobb, a longtime Chicago political operative, noted that while critics question whether CTU’s support will buy Johnson’s undivided loyalty, the same question applies to Vallas.
“Is he going to be beholden to the business community, and is one better to be beholden to than the other?” she said.
