The success of Brandon Johnson in Chicago’s recent mayoral election makes the city a model for progressive campaigns but also one that is difficult to reproduce.
in 2019 but increased the department’s budget three out of her four years in office, failed to even make the final round.), he went so far as to say that he was more Republican than Democrat, but big-name Democrats backed him up. Senator Dick Durbin endorsed Vallas in the final days of the campaign, as did Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Twenty of Chicago’s mostly Democratic alderpeople endorsed Vallas.
It has been easy to dismiss the effects of the protests of 2020, but they continue to reverberate, largely through greater public receptiveness to a nuanced response to violence. Johnson’s victory was foreshadowed in last November’s election, when a referendum on a plan called, with over ninety per cent of the vote, in the three wards where it was on the ballot. The plan would reopen mental-health clinics that were closed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2012.
When I spoke to Johnson in April, he told me that, for progressives, “this election demonstrated that we don’t have to be afraid of our values, and that we obviously can win on our values.” Johnson’s win was not just about having a superior message to Vallas, though that certainly helped.
But can Johnson maintain the budget-busting two-billion-dollar allocation to the police and also fund his vision of summer jobs for teen-agers, housing for the unhoused, and free public transit? I asked Asha Ransby-Sporn, a longtime organizer, and prison and police abolitionist who coördinated efforts for Johnson across the South Side, how activists would stay engaged during the Johnson administration.
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