No More Water, The Fire Next Time!
Bring Chicago Home's defeat is a warning for Mayor Brandon Johnson
Ouch
While it certainly wasn’t a blowout for the Left, Tuesday’s Illinois Democratic Primary results brought huge disappointments, and warning signs, for Mayor Brandon Johnson and down-ballot progressives.
The Bring Chicago Home (BCH) anti-homelessness campaign, one of the Mayor’s most prominent campaign promises, after well over a year of grassroot organizing, seems headed for defeat. The Cook County States Attorney’s race, an office currently held by one of the Mayor’s closest allies, where center-left candidate Clayton Harris III was pitted against tough-on-crime former Judge Eileen O’Neill Burke, is locked in a dead heat, and it is more likely than not that Harris comes up short.
While Chicago progressives are certainly no stranger to electoral defeats, especially against well-funded and dishonest opposition, the BCH referendum’s failure and Harris’ potential loss point to wider internal issues among the city’s governing left-wing.
Chicago voters are a tough demographic to win over; indeed, Chicago is a tough city. However, even amidst their apathy and infamous distrust of politicians, Chicagoans expect that those they elect to high office will fulfill the duties of that office and do so professionally and well. The loud noise of day-to-day public policy fights aside, they expect that the trains will be run on time, the garbage will be picked up, and their tax dollars (largely accumulated through racist and regressive means) won’t be wasted. Thus far, under Mayor Johnson, the record on these things has varied widely, from the good, the bad, the ugly, and the downright confusing.
What the Hell is Going On?
For starters, his handling of the city’s migrant crisis, a crisis that can be placed squarely at the feet of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s insidious xenophobia and President Joe Biden’s chronic inability to govern and lead, has gone from bad to worse.
First, there was the morally dubious idea to house new arrivals in a large tent encampment in the Brighton Park neighborhood. That idea was shot down late last year by Governor JB Pritzker’s office, citing major environmental and public health concerns. Then, there was the 60-day eviction policy, which the Mayor claimed was to “incentivize” migrants to find housing and seek help from the available assistance programs. This rather silly and extremely cruel policy had to be delayed three different times due to sub-zero temperatures, and most of the migrants currently housed in shelters won’t be evicted at all because of the city’s recently announced exemptions.
All of this has resulted in a massive crisis of administrative competence, which could have been avoided if the city had simply done its due diligence. In Brighton Park, the city should have vetted the contracting company providing the on-site housing, and made and implemented the necessary environmental impact assessment report recommendations long before even agreeing to the encampment idea. The Mayor’s office should have hired an intergovernmental affairs director to coordinate with the Governor’s office on needed funding immediately following the Mayor’s inauguration, rather than waiting until November to do so, and then childishly pointing fingers. And, for the love of God, the Mayor should never have announced the 60-day eviction policy; it is unworkable, cruel, and unnecessary.
This is not a crisis of one or two huge and fatal mistakes, nor is it a case of political betrayal as it was with Mayor Lightfoot. Rather, they have been “death by a thousand cuts” mistakes, small simple errors that have been to avalanche into huge policy and public relations catastrophes. After all, if the Mayor can’t be trusted to use the city’s resources wisely and effectively in housing a few thousand migrants and keeping them housed, why the hell should anyone believe that the projected $100 million in revenue as a result of BCH’s passage would have been handled any better?
The disaster of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the most commonly used public service in the city, is another matter.
Despite running an unreliable and underfunded city agency further into a pit, CTA President Dorval Carter has raked in massive pay increases. This comes amidst long wait times for trains and buses, a labor shortage, and multiple last-minute scheduling changes that leave Chicagoans without a bus or train to commute on at all.
Carter remains in post, despite multiple calls for his resignation. Why the Mayor hasn’t fired him and every political crony on the barely-competent CTA oversight board is anyone’s guess. Per usual, the Mayor hasn’t explained it.
What is the city’s plan to cut wait times, hire more drivers, conductors and engineers, increase and expand access to services for disabled passengers, and cut those God-awful wait times? Public transit is a civil rights and economic justice issue. Working people depend on the CTA to commute to and from demanding jobs in the third largest city in America. It should not be too much to ask that this be a priority of our progressive Mayor!
And finally, there is the issue of administrative hiring and communications. Far too many of those who work closely with the Mayor are harming his image, stifling and distracting from the progress the administration is making, and failing to control the narrative against an instinctively hostile press.
The Tribune story about the alleged “bullying” against conservative-leaning Alderman Bill Conway (34th Ward) by Mayoral senior advisor Jason Lee, apparently a botched attempt to win Conway’s vote on the BCH ordinance by bargaining with his request from the city to remove a homeless encampment, should never have been allowed to breathe air.
Deals for votes happened for decades under Chicago’s dying political machine, with little fanfare, but Lee should have known better than to pull this old trick with Conway, an alderman not immediately sympathetic to the Mayor’s agenda.
Worse still, Lee was later accused of bullying and mistreating City employees. Why is this man still employed by the Mayor if he can’t keep himself from yelling obscenities at city employees and doesn’t have the political skill necessary to negotiate council votes without it blowing up in the press?
And then there is press secretary Ronnie Reese, who scheduled an interview with the Mayor and the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board, a paper that normally handles city politics with an even hand. However, Reese demanded that the Editors keep the interview off the record. When they refused, the Mayor left the zoom call and ended the interview.
And so, rather than talking up the Mayor’s accomplishments, burying the hatchet with the press, and amplifying his agenda, the Mayor was instead fending off allegations of being evasive and barely available when called upon to answer basic questions about the inner-work of his administration.
A progressive mayor going against decades of neoliberal austerity politics should know better than to invite antagonistic relations among a largely corporately-owned press that is already anxiously anticipating (and maybe even hoping) for him to screw up. He has more than enough headaches; why create more?
Failing to proactively control the narratives the city’s media promotes, with their sensationalist headlines on crime and constant focus on the Mayor’s political relationship to the Chicago Teachers Union (something they never once did to former Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and his corporate friends), will be the death of any Mayor, no matter how warm and good-intentioned. This too must be a major priority of the Mayor and his office going forward.
Knowing Better & Doing Better
Whatever the reasons, the current administrative trajectory of this Mayoral administration is not good. If nothing changes between now and January 2026, a year and some change before the Mayor is up for re-election, it is not inconceivable to imagine a world in which the Council’s progressive wing gets wiped out and the Mayor is defeated in a right-wing reactionary backlash.
There are already those in the corporate class who don’t want the Mayor or his grassroots coalition anywhere near the corridors of power. They haven’t simply waved their white flags, taken their ball and gone home. They want revenge, and total corporate control of a city of 2.6 million people. They want to crush the CTU and other labor organizations, privatize the public schools, and let the CPD, quite literally, get away with murder.
How do we know this? Because they’ve done it before; in the parking meter deal, in the cover-up of Laquan McDonald’s murder, in the Paul Vallas-run disaster at CPS, and in the crisis of community divestment and under-resourcing that progressives and community organizers have been fighting against for decades.
It is not too much to ask that one of the wealthiest cities in the wealthiest country in the world provide basic public services, free at the point of use and paid for by the rich, to all of its citizens.
We have a Mayor who is ideologically committed to this idea, but whose governance has been lackluster at implementing it and building power to maintain it long-term. What he needs, and what the city needs, is a reset.
We need better and more competent hires in the Mayor’s office, a more accessible and available press schedule, an expedited FOIA request and delivery process and transparency reforms, a total restructuring of the Mayor’s press and comms team, a more long-term, diligent, and humane approach to the migrant crisis, a direct line of communication between activists, organizers and the Mayor’s office, and the CTA treated as a major priority and not an afterthought.
This is the chance for the Left to prove that it has what it takes to govern, to implement policy and agenda-set in a way that uplifts working people, to lead with compassion and empathy, not as disembodied sentimental emotions but as ground principles, and to build and maintain reliable public institutions.
We can’t afford to blow it. Chicagoans are a forgiving bunch, but Tuesday’s results show that they don’t trust this Mayor or his allies to handle the city’s purse responsibly.
He must change course and do so quickly, less the Negro spiritual go from spiritually uplifting to politically prophetic
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!”