CHICAGO — On his first day as Chicago’s mayor-elect, Brandon Johnson echoed his winning promise to rethink the city’s approach to public safety, while his lame-duck predecessor Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned him to show humility to first responders upon the heels of another firefighter death in the city.
Fresh off his narrow victory over Paul Vallas Tuesday night, Johnson began his day at the Cermak-Chinatown CTA station with the customary greeting of commuters and also went on MSNBC, where he was largely asked questions about crime. Noting his West Side roots as an Austin resident, Johnson said he “might be the first mayor ever elected in the city of Chicago that will wake up every single morning in the most violent neighborhood in the city of Chicago.” Then he dug into his overarching philosophy on restoring public safety.
Johnson stressed that the most effective solutions are less about more law enforcement and more about investments that include economic development, affordable housing and mental health services.
“We tend to limit our conversations around toughness and more police officers, and what has been proven over and over again, that is not a recipe for absolute success,” Johnson said. “And so our mission and my platform has been very clear. We get at the immediate dynamic of public safety, but we also set up long-term solutions.”
Johnson did not discuss the policing specifics he had touted on the campaign trail beyond hiring 200 more detectives via promotion from beat cops and ensuring less churn of officer supervisors. But he rebutted a question about Fraternal Order of Police local President John Catanzara’s previous warning there would be “blood in the streets” as the result of a mass Chicago police exodus under Johnson’s administration.
“Well, first of all, I don’t believe there’s a difference between me and the Police Department,” Johnson said. “Now, what the Fraternal Order of Police leader has said, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the values of the city of Chicago. … We’re not going to base our administration off of what, you know, the police union leader has said.”
Later in the day, Lightfoot broke weeks of silence since losing her bid for reelection to address a question about what advice she’d give Johnson when it comes to handling the all-too-frequent call of a first responder death. This time, it was Chicago Fire Department Lt. Jan Tchoryk, 55.
“Be humble. Be grateful,” Lightfoot said she would tell her successor. “Our first responders literally give their lives. There’s a lot of rhetoric that’s out there about first responders, particularly on the police side. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, when you have to make the calls that I’ve had to make, you better be humble, and you better be grateful.”
Though she did not elaborate on the police-related “rhetoric” in question, Lightfoot spent much of the final days of her own failed campaign digging into Johnson’s record of supporting the “defund the police” movement, warning Black residents in particular that he would make their streets less safe.
The outgoing mayor in her Wednesday advice to Johnson also addressed the importance of maintaining trust between her office and the rank-and-file cops, a relationship she struggled with mightily.
“It’s hard to motivate people when they don’t think that their leader has their back, and it’s absolutely essential,” Lightfoot said. “It’s why I go to roll calls. That’s why I reach out, and we may not agree on every issue, but I thank the Lord every single day for the first responders.”
Early returns as of Wednesday afternoon showed that Johnson won with 51.4% of the vote, while Vallas garnered 48.6%. Both candidates easily maintained their respective strongholds that propelled them into the runoff — the Milwaukee Avenue progressives and bungalow belt conservatives, respectfully.
But when it came to the coveted Black vote, which largely went to Lightfoot in the first round, Johnson cleaned house by sweeping all 16 majority Black wards, despite largely coming in third after the incumbent mayor and businessman Willie Wilson in the first round.
The 14 majority Latino wards were more mixed. Johnson won the wards encompassing Chicago’s most storied Mexican American and Puerto Rican enclaves: Little Village, Pilsen and Humboldt Park. But Vallas still held on to 10 of those wards, though some by slim margins, unofficial results showed.
The northern lakefront, from downtown to the Evanston border, repeated history at its opposing ends: the southernmost wards in that stretch again went for Vallas, and the Far North Side for Johnson. The shift occurs at the Lincoln Park and Lakeview border, where Johnson just barely took the 44th Ward and kept claiming wards to the north, as of Wednesday’s unofficial results.
Meanwhile, Vallas won the first majority-Asian ward’s vote in the 11th along Chinatown and Bridgeport. Johnson came out on top in the so-called Black influence 27th Ward that runs along the Near North Side and parts of the West Side.
Early returns also showed voter turnout among young adults aged 18 to 24 — consistently the most reluctant to cast ballots but likely a core base of Johnson’s — surged compared to the Feb. 28 election, up 32%. Among 25- to 34-year-olds, that jump was 24%.
United Working Families, a political arm of the Chicago Teachers Union, was the muscle behind Johnson’s impressive ground game that is credited with helping the candidate overcome his opponents heftier campaign war chest.
Since joining the race last October, Johnson raised roughly $11.3 million, state records show. Vallas, who entered the ring in June, raised $21 million over the entire span of his campaign, including $14.5 million in contributions just during the runoff alone.
UWF’s Executive Director, Emma Tai, said that its field operation knocked on 555,000 doors, made 1.26 million phone calls, fired off nearly 2 million texts and raised over $400,000 in grassroots donations.
“It’s a tale as old as time, right? Organized people versus organized money,” Tai said. “I was always pretty clear: Brandon is gonna need to raise a lot of money, like more money than we’ve ever raised. ... So it’s not like an ‘either-or.’ It is an ‘and.’ We need that, and we need an organizing program that is rooted in the movement.”
Another difference between this election cycle and previous? A dozen aldermanic candidates had intertwined their bids for office with UWF and Johnson’s candidacy, joining him on the campaign trail in their respective wards. Several other City Council contenders also independently backed Johnson.
“That almost never happens,” Tai said. “There’s a level of political alignment there.”
Tai said one moment in which it dawned on her that the tides were shifting was the reaction to a photo Johnson’s Twitter account posted in January of a “house party” fundraiser he had with a racially diverse room of supporters in Hyde Park.
A user who was anonymous accused the scene of being “staged” because “Why are you in some person’s basement talking to a very mixed crowd in one of the toughest crime infested parts of the city.”
“I was like, oh yeah, like, we are doing something that people haven’t seen a lot of and maybe don’t believe it’s true,” Tai chuckled.
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Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig contributed to this story.
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