The Worst Mayor in America

After Lori Lightfoot was voted out of the mayor’s seat in Chicago following her calamitous tenure, I dearly hoped that the residents of Chicago had come to their senses about progressive mayors and would vote for someone who had some understanding of fiscal responsibility and the role of a big city mayor.

It was not to be.

The mayoralty of Brandon Johnson has been, to say the least, a disaster. Witnessing his rejection by boards, committees and the residents of Chicago, Johnson continues to double down on failing policies. How did he get himself into such a mess?

He began his professional career as a teacher, but realized he could get more done from a political position:

First, he was elected to the county board, with the help of the board president, herself a former history teacher. Then he decided to run for mayor. The [teachers’] union endorsed him. It donated $2 million to his campaign and sent out its army of door knockers to spread the word about him. In an upset, the hip young teacher won, against an opponent with a better-known name who outspent him 2-1.

Once Johnson linked up with the teachers' union (CTU), his future was bright. Johnson and the union are joined at the hip.

How bad has Johnson’s governance been?

He’s decided to control the Chicago Board of Education, due to his dispute with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Pedro Martinez:

According to published reports, the current board had backed Martinez in a dispute with Johnson over the CPS budget and contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union – for which Johnson was once an organizer, and was a major financial supporter of his campaign for mayor. Martinez is opposing high-interest loans the mayor wants CPS to take out to support teacher raises being negotiated with the CTU, at a time when CPS is facing a $500 million deficit for the 2025 contract year. The board did not include the loan in the approved CPS budget for the 2024-25 school year.

Johnson demanded that Martinez resign, and Martinez refused. Instead, Johnson has reconfigured the Board of Education. In place of Johnson selecting all the board members, he will be able to select eleven of them, and ten will be elected by the citizens. Since Martinez is refusing to leave, Johnson can simply tell the citizens that he chose to fire him.

Easy.

The entire Chicago Board of Education will resign later in the month as a protest against his actions against Martinez.

Johnson seems to be incapable of contradicting his patrons on the CTU, and the price tag just keeps getting larger and larger.

But the list of his irresponsible decisions doesn’t end there. Here’s a sampling:

• He approved a 20% raise for the Chicago Police Department over four years, and added $1.06 billion to the police pension fund’s total liability;
• He refuses to allow the question of whether Chicago should be a sanctuary city to go before the voters. Meanwhile, Chicago has been deluged with illegal immigrants;
• He’s added a $500,000 snowplowing pilot program and $400,000 to fund a vice mayor’s office;
• His actions have led to the warning of a downgrade of the city’s pension fund;
• He claims that he’s having regular discussions on progressive ideas with Gov. Pritzker’s office, which the Governor denies'
• He asked for a $300 million tax hike, which the City Council refused; later they also rejected a $68.5 million property tax hike that he requested;
• He insists that those who criticize him are racist.
• He broke a City Council tie, 23-23 for a resolution that called for an immediate unconditional cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Refusing to hold Hamas responsible at all for their role in the conflict was not well-received;
• Although he originally supported the movement to defund the police, he’s finally realizing that doesn’t solve their violent crime problem:

After months of stating that Chicago can’t 'police its way' out of its violent-crime disease, Johnson finally crossed the first threshold to getting a handle on this mayhem, and that was to point the finger of blame where it belongs — at criminals, not some systemic conspiracy. Better policing isn’t all that’s needed, but it surely is a critical component.

Mayor Johnson is deeply enmeshed in his own “blame game” and false optimism: he says the state’s reduction of the city’s property tax revenue is to blame; he blames the Chicago Board of Education for not passing tax legislation for the public schools. He’s presented no plan for the taxes he was trying to raise—$100 million—for housing the homeless. He’s lost the support of the business community. And he insists on wearing “rose-colored glasses”:

But at his news conference after the council meeting, Johnson refused to accept an alarmist view of the future. He also would not say what his Plan B would be should this progressive revenue not come through in time for the 2026 budget cycle.

‘How about we just focus on what we want?’ Johnson said when asked whether he’s ruled out trying to pass a future property tax hike, after aldermen threw his latest attempt back in his face. ‘I want you all to stay positive, OK, because the people of Chicago and the state of Illinois really require that. Look, I know it’s easy to go back and forth about this tax versus this tax, but people have sold the people of Chicago out for too long, and they have kowtowed to the interests of the ultrarich.’

Keep your chin up, Mayor Johnson, and just keep blaming your predecessors and the ultrarich. We’ll see where that gets you in the next election.

[originally published December 30, 2024 in American Thinker]