This past Tuesday, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson ended up securing a win in the election as the next mayor of the city of Chicago, taking down his moderate rival and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas to step up and try to deal with the failings of incumbent Lori Lightfoot.
The group of three democrats battled it out this past February in a primary election which ended up with Lightfoot, who finished in third place against Vallas and Johnson, being disqualified, marking her as the first mayor of Chicago in close to forty years to fail at securing her reelection bid. Johnson had secured a staggering 51.4% of the overall tabulated vote as of this past Tuesday evening with 91% of the total expected ballot officially reporting in, while Vallas had 48.6%.
“Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people,” stated Johnson while issuing his victory speech. “The heart of this movement has always been about investing in people.”
Johnson became the target of heavy criticism all through his campaign, which centered largely on the city’s struggles to deal with an insane spike in violent crime, for his explanation of the “defund the police” movement as an “actual, real political goal” as part of a 2020 radio interview. He has since chosen to denounce his statement in later interviews, which Vallas made a key talking point in all of his campaign advertisements.
Throughout her four-year stay in office, Lightfoot witnessed an exponential spike in lawlessness. There were a staggering 480 homicides in the city of Chicago as of 2019, the year which Lightfoot managed to go into the office, while the number of murders rapidly climbed to 772 in 2020 and 900 in 2021, highlighting a massive increase of close to 58% as a number of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests took place in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Lightfoot, who has her own personal police protection unit of over 71 officers, made sure to sound the call to bring up proposals trying to cut $80 million from the budget of the Chicago Police Department in 2020.
As explained via his campaign website, Johnson stated that he will “work with police and first responders to invest in community-based interventions that de-escalate conflict, reduce violence and make our neighborhoods safer.” Vallas, on his own site, claimed that he would seek to spike the number of sworn officers and mark public safety as a “basic human right.”
Vallas ended up securing the endorsement of the Chicago Police Union, while Johnson was able to cash in on the endorsement of the Chicago Teachers Union, which ended up sparking fairly extreme criticism in the wake of government lockdowns for standing against the toning down of virtual instruction.
