Chicago under Mayor Brandon Johnson: The First Hundred (or so) Days

Analyzing the highs and lows of Mayor Brandon Johnson's first 100 days as Chicago's 57th Mayor

Brandon Johnson has served as Mayor of Chicago since May 15. Photo credit to the Chicago Tribune/Antonio Perez

It has been nearly four months since CTU organizer-turned-Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson marched onto the fifth floor of City Hall as Chicago’s 57th Mayor, and its most progressive chief executive since Mayor Harold Washington.

Since becoming Mayor, Brandon Johnson has demonstrated both a strong sense of determination to break the chokehold of neoliberalism and austerity politics that have governed Chicago for thirty years and an often frustrating propensity to turn deliberate policy-making into unhurriedness.

He has also inherited a series of political crises from his predecessor; a CTA that is falling apart, leaving hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans lacking the reliability of an essential public service, the Chicago Public Schools face both huge financial deficits and a fundamentally racist and broken funding model, violent crime, though declining, is still far too high, jeopardizing the safety of all Chicagoans, particularly in under-served neighborhoods, and then there is the migrant crisis, as busloads of asylum seekers from around the world arrive in Chicago nearly every day, and as the city struggles to draft a safe and effective way of housing and supporting them and receives minimal help from the entity actually responsible for their care, the federal government.

Any of these crises would overwhelm any mayor, let alone a brand new one, and all of them have occurred as Mayor Johnson attempts to strike a tedious balance between ideological assertiveness and deliberation, all while facing a brutally hostile media, loyally in the pockets of the city’s corporate class, and an onslaught of far-right attacks on both himself and the city he governs.

But the Mayor has risen above many of his challenges, and he can boast of several huge accomplishments.

He gave CPS employees paid family leave, his two main campaign promises, the Treatment Not Trauma and the Bring Chicago Home ordinances, are well underway, and he’s completely reshaped the Chicago City Council and Board of Education, putting progressives in powerful positions to institute policy.

However, the Mayor and his allies have also made a series of puzzling, careless, and silly mistakes, giving the right-wing Chicago press establishment ample rope with which to hang them.

The firing of Chicago Public Health Director Allison Arwady should not have been a major news story. As a candidate, Johnson had promised to get rid of the Lightfoot appointee, citing his and Arwady’s wide policy differences.

While much of the media didn’t cover the story extensively at the time, when push came to shove, and Arwady’s firing was announced, the story was front-page news for weeks.

Rather than controlling the narrative, immediately issuing a statement backing up Arwady’s firing on policy grounds, and squashing the story immediately, the Johnson Administration lost control of the narrative, barely addressed the firing head-on, and opened themselves up to easily avoidable criticism and fake outrage editorials.

Reporters such as Mary Ann Ahern, a noted critic of Chicago’s progressive movement, were happy to take advantage of the Johnson team’s goof, parading Arwady in an exit interview, something rarely if ever afforded to ex-bureaucrats, and dragging the story on for weeks, despite the Mayor’s repeated refusal to comment on the story.

This was not the only time that the Mayor’s team fumbled the ball and let a story get out of hand. In August, local news reported that migrants being moved from a downtown police station into an Edgewater emergency shelter had their belongings tossed by city officials in preparation for the annual Lollapalooza Concert.

For hours, there was no response from the Mayor’s team or the Mayor himself, and the perception that, under his watch, the city had cruelly treated asylum seekers to save face for a multi-million dollar concert was allowed to fester.

It was not until 9 p.m. that evening that the Mayor released a statement clarifying that the migrants themselves chose to toss out certain items that were either expired or couldn’t fit in the new shelter.

While a clarification was indeed welcome and needed in this instance, it came much later than it should have. The reporter who initially tweeted the story deleted her post and also issued a clarification. It would appear, however, that the Mayor’s press team and perhaps even the Mayor himself, are in need of a down-to-earth realization that the media is not their friend, and they should always seek to counter-balance their criticism, control the narrative and respond to situations before they happen.

And then there is the Mayor’s refusal to fire Dorval Carter, the incompetent and out-of-touch President of the Chicago Transit Authority. Despite the fact that the CTA is underfunded, under-staffed, unsanitary, and unreliable, Mr. Carter, who hardly uses the CTA unlike hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, is still in post.

From both a political and policy standpoint, this makes very little sense. In no way does Carter promote or advocate for any of the Mayor’s agenda, and in no way would firing Carter come with a shred of political backlash. Much of the media opposes Carter and has slammed his leadership profusely, and the Mayor’s progressive allies vehemently want Carter gone. Why the Mayor has refused to take the hint is largely a mystery, as he’s refused to comment on the matter. In any case, Mr. Carter is wholly unfit for purpose and should’ve been fired a long time ago. Dragging his feet on this matter only feeds speculation that the Mayor’s commitment to the CTA is largely lackluster and fails to meet the moment of the service’s crisis.

But for all of his mistakes and accomplishments, his highs and lows, his best and worst days, Mayor Johnson has proven himself to be an authentic progressive chief executive, who isn’t timid or afraid of challenging the city’s broken political consensus.

He’s refused to use inflammatory and racist rhetoric to describe Black and Brown teenagers caught up in cycles of violence and unruliness, despite the insistence of many that he be more “forceful”, and the intense political backlash. He has also proven himself adept at making political coalitions with his adversaries, preferring the Harold Washingtonian “kill ‘em with charm” strategy over his predecessor Lori Lightfoot’s openly combative and hostile posture.

Both of these stylistic decisions show that Johnson is razor-serious not only about being a progressive Mayor and enacting progressive policies that uplift working people, but also, perhaps even more crucially, building power.

Any one of the Mayor’s laundry list of policy goals laid out eloquently and in detail in his transition document, could easily be stripped away under a white-resentment-fueled political backlash and a disorganized institutional left more focused on infighting and drama than tangible achievements.

The Mayor seems to realize this, much more than even Washington did, and if he can hunker down, carefully build up Chicago’s Left, avoid silly mistakes and mishaps, and razor-focus on delivering his agenda (and adding to it), then Chicago and its people will be in good hands.