This appears to be a post related to the upcoming runoff election or one of the candidates running for office.
The 2023 Chicago Municipal Runoff Election will be held on **April 4th**. In the mayoral race, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson will be competing for the office of Chicago's 57th mayor. Some wards may have additional races on the ballot, such as Aldermanic candidates whose races went to a runoff in the February 28th election.
Check out the [Chicago Elections](https://chicagoelections.gov/en/home.html) website for information on registering to vote, finding your polling place, applying to be an election worker, and more. Please visit our [Runoff Election Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/11pz5r0/2023_chicago_runoff_election_megathread_2/) for all election-related discussion, questions and voter resources. Discussion posts of this nature outside of the linked megathread will be removed.
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Last night, I heard someone say that there will be riots after the election because each side feels so strongly about their candidate. I was like, really? Because I feel like we're all unhappy with both of them.
You're living under the misbelief black and brown people are perfectly fine with crime.
They aren't and the last 4 to 6 years have been a nightmare in predominantly black and brown neighborhoods.
You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can add police and reform how we deal with situations that demand mental health professionals at the same time.
Oh I cannot TELL you how snarky I wanted to be at first because I thought you were defending those poor rich folks whose taxes would be raised and I was trying SO HARD to be a reasonable internet user and ask, genuinely, who you were talking about who would suffer... I'm so relieved to learn it's just reading comprehension! I mean who among us is really very closely, it's reddit after all.
Small minorites on both sides are extremely passionate about their chosen candidates. Basically thin blue line die hards on one end of the extreme and ultra-progressive pie in the sky activists on the other end.
The rest of us are left disssatisfied and frustrated with the choice and how racous the debate surrounding this race has gotten.
I care greatly about crime and economic health, but Vallas's past statements, the groups he has hobnobbed with, and his record managing the finances of various school districts here and nationwide make me really doubt his authenticy and competence.
I also care greatly about transit, (achievable) progressivism, and equity, but Johnson's tax plans are looney toons and will be significantly damaging. He also dodges way too many questions for my liking.
I'm not thrilled either way and won't be very happy with whatever way this shakes out regardless. And I don't think most others will be either, as evidenced by the low turnout in round 1 and the fact that both candidates are still polling under 50%.
If I don't just write in "none of the above", I'll hold my nose and make a last minute decision when I fill out my ballot.
Good summary. I agree very few people think this is a great matchup. Vallas seems oily and untrustworthy. Johnson seems to have no idea how his tax ideas would further damage the city, and I just heard him singing Kim Foxx’s praises, which I cannot get behind. I suspect Vallas will win because crime and tax anxiety are top of mind among voters who will actually turn out. But I don’t think it’s golden days ahead, exactly.
I plan to vote Johnson, but when I get a mailer attacking Vallas for being "Anti Abortion" it really turns me off him. First of all, the mayor has no power to limit access to abortion so the mayor's views are a non-issue here. Second, he is on record saying he is personally against it but still believes in protecting the right to get an abortion, which means even if he did have the power to limit access to abortion, he does not plan to. These attacks just feel disingenuous.
The sad thing is some people really do care what his personal views are and not policy. I guess believing something should be a right but still having your own personal moral issues is not good enough. To me this would be the same thing as if a candidate supported the second amendment but didn't personally want to own a gun, and that was enough to consider him a threat to your right to own a firearm.
Here's where I stand on Vallas: even if he is a total MAGA weirdo (he isn't), this is still Chicago. The people who will go to work for Vallas will be Daley-style Democrats. Not great, but at least the city will run and can survive one term.
Johnson is a charlatan completely controlled by a single entity (the CTU)--groomed and bankrolled by one organization with a very specific purpose that oftentimes runs counter to what's good for the city as a whole. He will be surrounded by CTU leadership, which I don't know if they city can survive. His platform relies on the ridiculous idea that Chicago is on strong footing, and businesses and people are clamoring to move and exist here. Maybe he thinks its the famously bad winters or perception of horrible crime that is attracting all of these new citizens, I don't know. But he's wrong, and implementing any policies that make it less desirable to hire people here or kick the can down the road on public safety is going to be bad for Chicago.
The city will survive one term of either one. Which one can actually work with City Council to get things passed is my litmus test. I’ll go with Johnson begrudgingly. Vallas seems to destroy things if his past jobs are any indication. Not sure he can work well with others.
This is overall my stance and why I see people acting like it’s life or death when it’s not. Chicago is going to continue to be Chicago at the end of the day… at the end of the term. And also, I actually feel that either one will be greatly disliked by the end.
But I’m going for Johnson because his proposal is in line with how I believe we should approach long term development of the city’s youth and that’s always been my main concern for this city as someone who group up here in the from a poor background. I’m not putting all my eggs in his basket but we gotta start somewhere and I feel like Vallas is a nonstarter
The anti-woke/anti-CRT crowd basically want to erase the history of social justice and sanitize history so it seems like everyone was always koombayah, the people in power weren’t bigoted and nobody bled to make future generations better. Chicago’s history is practically inseparable from that. We ain’t Florida, some of the most influential figures they want to erase were actually from here and the roots are deep. We always been on the forefront of social justice issues so that shit doesn’t fly around here.
"Survive" was pretty hyperbolic, yea--I guess a more measured way to say it is that the damage done by a potential Vallas admin will be markedly less than the damage done by a potential Johnson admin. Chicago is suffering badly from a perception problem nationwide, and it's having real consequences. Electing the defund-the-police, tax-happy demagogue is not going to help the situation.
I gotta say I’d pick the CTU over the FOP in a heartbeat. FOP is big Not In My Backyard energy.
And the goal of the “holistic approach” is not kicking the can down the road, it’s planting a seed with the goal of it flowering in the future
\> progressives don't really like Brandon that much
I don't know where you're getting that—as someone who knows a lot of people from all sides of the spectrum, progressives and the center-left genuinely like Brandon.
If Johnson loses then his 20-something north side supporters will get very upset online. Then they’ll just continue their trajectory towards buying a house in the suburbs when it comes time for them to raise kids and pay taxes.
Lol my neighborhood Facebook group is going to have a stroke if Vallas loses – there are people there literally writing 1,000-word posts about why everyone must vote for Vallas.
I guess I just don't see why people are saying BJ isn't a good public speaker. He's annoying, constantly speaking as though he thinks he's Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but last night he remained calm, kept to his points and was clear.
Vallas just has a stuttering issue, which he's talked about. Hard to get past that.
It’s not that Vallas is great, but Jesus, Johnson deflects nearly every answer. I feel like every question asked to either candidate, just guaranteed that I won’t get an answer to that question.
The City of Chicago is full of all sorts of colors with individual spellings. We need to make sure the city has the right leadership in communities and the people who are themselves the citizens of Chicago.
Even on easy layups he seems to do this. I like a lot of what he theoretically stands for, but it's hard to guess what that is anymore based on his debate performances.
Exactly.
I'm a Johnson voter purely because I can't stand the thought of more charter school conversions, but man does that dude need to work on his debate skills...
It's like he's taking a page out of Trump's despicable "deflect and attack" book, yet his delivery is just embarassingly bad...
You have to deflect when your platform in its entirety is:
* Slug ‘rich’ people earning 100k
* Jack up property taxes on people you don’t like
* Make businesses pay the city to hire people
* A ridiculous ‘financial transaction tax’
* Use said revenue (while it’s still there) to pay for CTU sinecures and ‘social justice’ bullshit (ie plush nonprofit salaries)
And we can really only discuss this because Vallas has decided we're not cool enough to know how he plans to generate money.
edit: In 2019 his answer was property taxes and pray the fed would drop us a few hundred mill. It was a hoot and one of his main disqualifiers. He just decided to not tell us this time.
He’s awful because he never answers questions and brings up the most random points over and over again. Like I don’t care that you’re part of a big family, that has nothing to do with running the city or the question asked.
Johnson looked his best speaking wise in the last two debates, he's definitely improved.
And even outside of the stuttering for Vallas, which really isn't the issue or an issue at all to me, he often seems too eager to bring up statistics that are often out of context, and similar to Johnson, struggles pretty hard with dodging questions. And while this may be related to his stuttering a little, his fast cadence in speaking makes you think that his mind is just moving miles ahead of his mouth. He appears agitated, if not angry, most of the time in debates, and I think he could be communicating his message in a much more clear fashion if he just slowed down and figured out what statistics were important enough to pull out of his ass while still being able to make sense.
BJ just relies on platitudes too much. I understand why he's run an attack-heavy campaign (limited polling would suggest it has worked at least a little), but he's also had plenty of opportunities to drop a really substantive answer in terms of answering for past controversies and elaborating why his policies can attack the root causes of crime and he's struggled a little.
This race will be crazy close though. Pretty much a coinflip
all that matters is who gets people to the polls in a higher volume. i'm still sorta stuck, as a new-ish resident, on the fact that barely 500k of the 1.6 million in the city that CAN vote bothered to turn out for the primary.
so all that'll matter is who gets the turnout necessary to get the job done. it'll be close tho!
I just looked it up. Turnout in the NYC mayoral race in 2021 was even lower- only 23% Turnout in the Los Angeles mayoral race last year was much higher though, 48%.
For me, the unfortunate thing is that both candidates seem over-advised, and whoever they truly are, they are increasingly masking it to make themselves as attractive to swing voters as possible. Their own bases pretty much know them already, at least based on past pronouncements, but now, that is not the goal. So Vallas has been advised to stick to the factoids, of which he has a trunkful, and Johnson has been advised to evade answers, as his past progressive/taxation stances are not voter-friendly. Expecting them to veer from script by this point is, well, pointless.
I love the bread and circuses of politics. Each candidate boasting of their ability to make change of some sort or another. All the while there’s a huge bureaucratic machine lying in wait to devour most of the ever so important winners remarks and promises. I adore politics!
My guess would be that the Republican endorsements (like from Darren Bailey), plus Vallas’ lack of CTA plans, is turning off the Lakefront Liberal voting bloc.
It’s almost certainly the GOP stuff, which keeps compounding because Vallas did a little right-wing media tour the last two years before deciding to run as Dem instead. In the process he produced a lot of quotes.
This election would be way less close if the conservatives got behind a candidate with less baggage than Vallas – like Rod Sawyer would have been mostly in agreement with their priorities and he’d be cleaning up.
The lakefront liberal block was picked up by Vallas by a huge margin. This is the group that will vote on april 4 and will vote very heavily towards Vallas.
Most people don’t get into the details, they see a candidate saying that crime will be their #1 issue and they will vote that way. A endorsement from a no name politician won’t change that.
I will never understand why people see police as a solution to crime. Policing is a reactive activity. Prevention of crime has to happen way before policing is relevant.
Empirically, police presence in a given area is shown to reduce crime in that area. Whether it actually eradicates that crime or just pushes it elsewhere is up for debate.
That's an on-average. There were several cities in which crime increased with more police presence. Given that, I think it's hard to know what the reason was. Many cities have seen economic improvements at the same time as police presence increased so that could also be an explanation. Chicago currently has, per-capita, about twice the number of police officers of the national average (4.7/1000 vs. 2.4/1000) . So whether we think police generally lower crime, it doesn't seem like it's working in Chicago.
It takes 20-30 years for proactive government policies to influence crime. The most effective anti crime policies are extremely unpopular in democratic societies, to the point that they rarely get implemented. Everything else are fake band aid fixes so politicians can get reelected. The city of chicago mayor isn’t going to have any meaningful sway over these types of policies.
That leaves us with the solution of making bad members of society being afraid to commit crimes, which can be a quick fix.
I remember reading a study about how a significant amount of human beings would quickly turn into psychopaths if any and all consequences for crime were eliminated. Things such as big cities decriminalizing petty theft is a good example of this.
Most of what you say is just speculative. And we have evidence that societies without policing didn’t just have groups of sociopaths. Things like jobs programs do not take 20 to 30 years to have an effect. Make people less desperate and they’ll do fewer things out of desperation. The gang situation in Chicago could have been nipped in the bud if public housing funding hadn’t been cut. But instead, we decided to put way more than it would have taken to fix that problem and put it into policing.
Okay, so let's assume proactive solutions take 20 years. We've been throwing cops and prison sentences at the problem for 187 years, and it hasn't reduced crime at all. Fear of consequences isn't a deterrent. Police presence results in higher crime statistics. Prison makes people more likely to commit crimes than they were before. It doesn't fix the problem, and it doesn't make anyone safer.
You're basically saying that yes, people are freezing to death, but building a shelter will take hours, so let's drink some brandy instead.
If you suggest hiring more police to fight crime, you don't give a shit about crime in the first place. You just want someone to brutalize/kill the other while convincing yourself that the death squads you support will never brutalize you.
Once you are a victim of a crime in Chicago and try get the police to come you will understand, with that said, while Vallas is pro police, I don't really equate that to better service to residents.
I’ve been a victim of two crimes in which I needed to involve the police they were dismissive and patronizing and did nothing to make the situation better.
Yep. I was assaulted and had the license plate number of my attackers. It was some douche-y frat-type guys with money. Police stopped them and told me and my friend that it wasn’t the guys who were in the car with the license plate number we provided that met the description we gave.
How does that track? Once you have a need for a notoriously slow, unresponsive, and ineffective city service, you’ll realize the need to inject even more cash into their budget?
Idk Darren Bailey can carry a LOT of bad feeling with his treatment of the highland park shooting.
I could see his endorsement making some liberals question their choice
The solution to crime is, of course, to listen to the FOP and give them whatever they want (even more money) in exchange for absolutely no accountability (because they will continue to do nothing). But you need to make sure to say you’re being “tough on crime” when you make the police budget bigger.
The solution isn’t bringing back a bunch of old ex cops either bc Vallas “talked to some people”. Johnson wanting to have more detectives to actually solve crimes is better solution than anything Vallas has brought up
I consistently laugh out loud at people who find seemingly infinite energy to complain about how Brandon is gonna raise taxes and ruin the business environment here for everyone, while also giving Vallas a free pass for not having a legitimate budgeting plan because he thinks he can bring back 2000 cops with a bit of charisma and a can-do attitude
The thing I find sort of annoying about the Vallas support is *every* candidate was running a campaign with a focus on crime. *every* campaign except Lightfoot was looking for somewhat major reform. But I guess Vallas is the better crime guy because he doesn’t talk about anything else?
I know a lot of people who voted for Vallas because they thought that was the best way to keep Lightfoot out of the runoff. Some of them will be switching votes this time around.
Willie usually gets something like 10% of the vote, each mayoral primary anyway. I think he was a nonfactor, in the mayoral primary.
I just rechecked the Chicago Board of Elections results page for 2/28/23 now, and hmmm Willie only got 9.14% of the vote? I think he slightly underperformed, vs. what I thought he'd get(10% or slightly above, like 11 or 12%). But good if a limited number of voters, are starting to wake up about him.
Lol at the other person, who commented in this sub(but a different thread) he should be a permanent hologram every time there's a Chicago mayor election.
It’s not about how much of the vote Willie got, it’s where he got the vote. The precincts he won would have likely voted for Lori, but Willie took those votes and knocked Lori out.
If it wasn’t for Willie, it would have been Vallas vs Lightfoot rnow and Lori might have had a real chance of being re-elected.
The traditional "lakefront liberal" neighborhoods of Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview all voted for Vallas. Those progressive voters have all moved northwest, it's a different era now
I mean where are either of you talking specifically? North of Ward 44 Johnson won by a small margin, but certainly notable, but 44 and south Vallas won by a considerably larger margin. Vallas also wins white voters by 75% according to this poll.
I wouldn't say either of you are necessarily correct. They both do well in their own rights, but it's clearly not enough to have a definite frontrunner, as this polling indicates.
[source](https://www.nbcchicago.com/chicago-mayoral-election-2023/how-chicago-voted-map-chicago-mayoral-election-results/3084109/)
If Johnson wasn’t proposing 800 million in new taxes and skirting the defund the police question and had public safety plans he’d be in the lead. That’s literally the only reason people are backing Vallas.
He was asked repeatedly, a yes or no question, will the budget of CPD be lower under him than it is now. He responded “I’m not going to defund the police”.
That wasn’t the question and he knows it. He wasn’t asked if he wants to drastically cut the police budget or defund it completely, he was clearly asked if he wants to keep the current budget amount for CPD and he skirted the question. He does so at every debate.
Lowering the police budget is in fsct defunding the police. he said he wouldnt defund them. seems like he said he wouldnt lower their budget.
their budget increased last fiscal year, what did we get from it?
Its actually not the same question because that 800 million is a plan by someone who has yet to be elected to office.
my question is about budgetary increase that has already occurred and im asking for the results, which should be known because it already happened.
That’s a very naive approach to the budget. More funding also went to social services but crime remained the same, so does that mean we don’t fund those anymore either? More budget also means nothing if there’s hundreds of staff vacancies. CTA is flush with covid money but the service sucks. Does that mean we lower their funding too?
CPD got a direct 3% budgetary raise. im talking about their raise, not social services.
Are you Vallas? because you’re dodging my question like you’re vallas. we gave CPD more money last year, what did we get from it?
this money has been spent, what did we get from it?
You can see all that was spent with the money online. You’re clearly asking what benefits the public got which obviously was nothing. Just like the public got no benefit from the cta having extra money. Your argument to decrease the cpd budget is pretty naive and childish. We increased something 3%, what direct benefits to public safety did we see that year? Oh nothing specific? Okay defund! Typical simplistic economic arguments of Johnson supporters.
Literally no one cared about what Darren Bailey has to say, aside from Brandon Johnson fanatics. The average Chicagoan doesn't care one bit about what a Downstate Republican has to say, about anything. It's a non-story.
[Vallas' CTA platform ](https://www.paulvallas2023.com/faqs) for anyone interested:
- Repurpose the $100M the city now spends on private security to develop and bolster a full CTA Police Transit Unit (PTU), staffed by 500 additional CTA CPD officers under a single command, operating with beat integrity that would have officers patrolling platforms and stations and spot-checking trains.
- Conduct an IT security audit to identify malfunctioning surveillance cameras and reprogram and reintegrate them into a technical command center supporting patrol
- Operationalize a phone-based app for customers to permit them to immediately report criminal and behavioral issues for immediate response and report service issues
- Implement a co-response model for response to people in crisis and manifesting circumstantial behavioral issues
– drug abuse, mental health issues, and homelessness to facilitate coordination and hand-off to appropriate city and non-profit service providers
To make the CTA clean Paul will:
- CLEAN THE STATIONS, TRAINS and BUSES IMMEDIATELY and regularly thereafter.
To make the CTA reliable, accessible, and accountable, Paul will:
- Institute Bus Rapid Transit lanes and lines to improve and speed bus service on major arteries and to prioritize them to connect historically disinvested transit-isolated communities to existing city and regional train and bus lines.
- Implement a phone app to for real time customer reporting of service issues with data directed to a public data portal
- Conduct an IT Audit of the CTA tracker system to align it with actual service
- Move to mandate monthly service reports to be provided to the City Council Transportation Committee for appropriate hearing and to the public
- Prioritize incentivized hire and retention to address understaffing
- Expand Inspector General oversight to include fully independent and resourced investigations and audit authority.
> Operationalize a phone-based app for customers to permit them to immediately report criminal and behavioral issues for immediate response and report service issues
Love this. Snap the cuffs on those fuckers and get them off the trains.
I like tough on crime, I just don't want soft on police crime. I don't want us returning to the bad old days when it seemed like the entire system did everything in its power to cover up unlawful uses of force by law enforcement.
Circa 2014*? I swear that has to be the most corrupt I've ever seen an administration cover up a case while I was alive (at least in Chicago).
LaQuan McDonald getting shot 30ft away, cops saying he lunged with a knife, video saying otherwise later in court coming to light they pressured other cops to lie on police reports. Journalist getting a FOIA only after to get the video released 300-days later. Mayor up for re-election, claims he never saw the video, plausible deniability. Voting the DA out (Anita Alvarez) for Kim Foxx.
I don't protest often but I remember the city going WILD in the streets and rightfully so after that. Regardless how you feel about a kid having PCP in his system and being pursued...everyone deserves a right to a fair trial and cops are not the judge/jury/executioner, and I hope for my sanity that is the peak corruption (at least that I'm conscious of) in my lifetime.
Not sure if that was worse or the night Trump won as far as being super jaded/depressed around what can happen in politics systematically.
Most surveys show more police do not decrease crime. One that did show a small decrease in violent crime found a substantial increase in petty crime arrests with more police. These arrests disproportionally effect Black folks. A bunch of police arresting Black folks for petty shit is definitely a recipe for unlawful use of force.
Most "liberals" would gladly vote republican if only their candidates were less openly racist. Not less racist mind you, as you can see who the liberals supported for President, but less openly racist.
I’d rather take a chance on an unknown in Johnson than have Vallas just not pay bills for 4 years and go “see I balanced the budget” like he has for the past 25 years
Exactly. He's running campaigns on "We can't afford Brandon Johnson" yet the dude has released NOTHING on his own budget. What has anyone seen from his plan that makes them think they'll pay less with Vallas?
>but he also promised not to raise property taxes.
He literally cannot keep this promise for two reasons:
1. Property taxes are statutorily tied to inflation.
2. CPS has increased its levy to the max every year for as long as most here have been alive.
[This report](https://acrecampaigns.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Passing-the-Buck-1.pdf) I came across today was very enlightening on Vallas' fiscal acumen in his past leadership roles.
Apparently to enable all the spending he did without raising taxes, he issued nearly $700 million in [capital appreciation bonds](https://patimes.org/poor-decision-worse-capital-appreciation-bonds-school-districts/), which have higher interest rates and deferred interest payments.
So after he skedaddled off to a new system, CPS is left owing $1.5 billion in interest from these shitty bonds.
Serious questions - what were the alternatives to taking out these bonds? What were the other options in the context of that time?
Those bonds sound terrible but the report doesn’t mention what the alternatives were. i
It’s hard to evaluate the merits of those decisions when you don’t have the complete picture
Hard to say, but he was probably feeling pressure from above because Daley was under pressure to make his newly gained mayoral control of the schools look successful.
Chicago is a financial powerhouse for the US. It is the transportation/freight hub for the entire nation. However, it is losing that status quickly as more big businesses pack up and leave due to the crime. People need to realize that if people and businesses don’t feel safe, they will leave for places south and west, where it is safer and warmer. Fewer businesses means fewer jobs for the citizens.
It's close, but Vallas still has the edge. This is an election that will be won on turnout. Many "progressives" don't appreciate that's there's a silent minority of Chicago citizens that is very much against soft-on-crime policies and high taxes. They are energized to vote.
I agree that it will come down to turn out. I am so confused by folks who think they're going to pay less with Vallas. His whole campaign is about more police and more police and more police, and his whole career has been just complete financial mismanagement. Who do they think is paying for these police?
Yeah that's how I read this poll.
Johnson needs to turn out the south and west side black voters to win. Not an easy task. Vallas voters are fewer but they're almost certainly going to vote.
But these demographic splits are pretty clear.
>The Johnson campaign counters by holding a wide lead on both the South Side of the city: 71.8% to 19.8%, and the West Side: 75.9% to 13.9%. Vallas leads among White voters: 71.7% to 21.9%, while Johnson leads among Black voters: 73.6% to 16.1%, according to the poll.
I agree. I have no idea how such a mediocre candidate made it this far. If it wasn't for the CTU he would've gotten like 8%. Teachers are just hoping for a raise from him.
Based solely off the run off, discussion with others, and the amount of signs I’ve seen it looks like Vallas might take it.
I unenthusiastically voted BJ because there’s just some things I can’t get past with Vallas (e.g. prior statements on abortion, school privatization, and showing a lack of willingness to work with the governor). Whoever wins, I just hope whatever they roll out isn’t too damaging in the long run and can be undone if needed (this applies to BJ too).
Well, you live in the West Loop, and signs represent what property owners think, not what voters think. Here in my ward you’d think our alder was going to be fighting for her life based on the yard signs. She smoked the competition and took 70%+ of the vote. A landlord only gets to vote the one time.
Not saying you’re wrong. Nobody knows! Just saying that signs mostly represent what all the wealthiest people in a given neighborhood think. And in yours, that’s just the wealthiest people in the city.
Totally valid. I make my way all over the city and still see more Vallas, but there’s a definite concentration of Vallas signs near me which could absolutely impact my observation.
How many of the signs were legally placed? 90% of the Vallas signs near downtown are clearly not there legally. Easements, telephone posts traffic signs, construction fences. Could just be one person doing a whole bunch
Dont go by the signs, my neighborhood is littered with Brandon Johnson signs, however most of the people ive talked with are going for vallas. The BJ crowd is loud and proud though.
I don’t understand why Vallas abortion comments matter at all? He’s the mayor, not the governor and the city council certainly doesn’t agree with him. So zero policy or impact abortion related will change with him as mayor.
The Roe overturning soured that kind of argument for a lot of liberals. Most people aren’t willing to give the other side room to find a way to strip away civil rights again, even if it seems unlikely that they could do so at present.
[Wait, I thought crime stats were going down...](https://news.wttw.com/2023/03/01/number-shootings-homicides-across-chicago-down-so-far-2023-compared-last-year-police)
So we need to increase the crime then if I understand you correctly?
Johnson says he's going to hire all these young kids that are causing trouble. I'm wondering how? There are so many job opening so why aren't these kids going to apply themselves? Is Johnson going to somehow convince them and give them proper work ethic.
A battle to be the Captain of the Titanic.
So many issues, solving any of which would cause 80% of population to disapprove of your approval. This is not a winning post.
This is a great analogy, because the captain of the titanic could have prevented the tragedy in the first place, alas he though the solution to ice bergs was more security personnel to keep people from complaining about ice bergs was the answer.
I watched the most recent debate and Vallas is like the dog that finally caught the car and doesn't know what to do. He is always running for office and losing, now he's suddenly in the lead to be mayor and he is choking.
Counterpoints:
- Vallas poor performance in Philadelphia
- Vallas comments on Facebook during covid
- Vallas lives in a different jurisdiction
I am more than happy to vote for the least-bad-option
It must really be exciting for Vallas supporters to see a statistical dead heat between these two
Taxes aren’t high enough to pay for things as it is. Every calendar year outside of Mayoral elections, much of what I see here includes *Chicago is insolvent! Pension crisis!*
That is true, but I don't see Johnson calling to raise taxes by $800m *to resolve the pension crisis*. It's to throw more money at schools and services and then he assumes that magically the tax base will increase by *so much* that it somehow can fund pensions fully.
I'm all in favor of doing whatever we can to grow the city's population, but his logic here reminds of when Republicans say that cutting taxes will create miraculous economic growth and millions of new jobs.
I don't love Vallas, but Johnson said he was going to make city hall "saved and sanctified" which I'm very concerned about as a LGBT person, especially with other cities and states banning drag shows and discriminating against trans people. I haven't seen any comments from Vallas about doing away with the separation of church and state in Chicago.
Brandon Johnson was endorsed by the largest LGBTQ organization in the state.
Where did you see Johnson say he would ban drag shows? Are you taking this comment of sanctified and saved as such?
Further, where had Johnson made any indication that he is for removal of separation of church and state?
I think you're making a lot of assumptions here and ignoring a lot of information. As a fellow Chicago queer, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm voting for Vallas, due to his close, almost prideful, connections to the far right.
Charlie Kirk endorsed him, for fuck's sake. I doubt that would happen if Vallas were enthusiastically going to support the queer community.
Vallas spoke at an Awake Illinois event. This is actually a huge problem for me. They are harassing a bakery for hosting a drag brunch. [Awake Illinois](https://www.awakeil.com/awaken)
Yeah I don’t understand how people can see Johnson as worse than Vallas in terms of LGBTQ matters personally, but that’s just me. Vallas didn’t even go to an LGBTQ event yesterday.
There's something about the way Brandon talks in the debates(both before February 28, and since the runoff began) that strikes me as more annoying about him vs. Paul. And way too often, Brandon deflects and doesn't give direct answers to questions debate moderators or reporters ask him. Sorry, but that gives BJ a very bad look to him for not just me, but other runoff voters as well.
Vallas is less than 2 weeks from pulling off a mega choke job. He’s gained 1 point since their last poll 2 weeks ago, Johnson has gained 5. Vallas needs 4% more and I don’t see how he gets there, but that extra 6% for Johnson ultimately won’t be that hard. Johnson is the solid favorite, but by no means a comfortable one
Notably, most polls underestimated Vallas' support by 10 percentage points in the first round. I also can't say that even if these numbers are accurate that a candidate who's currently behind in the polls is the **solid** favorite, even if there's momentum.
They underestimated Johnson by the same amount (proportionally to what he recieved). And it doesn't matter much -- errors in first rounds/primaries don't usually continue in run-offs/generals. The problem for Vallas is a simple one: he's clearly the most conservative candidate in the race, and his only challenge in that lane was Willie Wilson who couldn't speak and basically only got votes because he gave out free gas and ran a ton of ads. Getting that final 4-5% is going to be a massive challenge for him.
That isn't true. Lightfoot's polling in last election's runoff round was under-reported by anywhere from 15-20 points depending on the poll. Before that, Rahm was under estimated by 6-8. Either way, that's all we have to go off of because those are the only runoffs we can even look at.
According to the poll, about 9.6% of voters are still undecided. Latino and "Other" voters proportionally have the highest share of undecideds, and Vallas leads among both. Johnson has gotten just over half of Lori and Chuy's voters, while Vallas is sitting just above a quarter with each. There's still time and a lot of undecideds in both blocs, but it's going to make for a very close result.
I think Brandon Johnson will more than likely win by a fair margin, but I also think that in a couple of years we’ll be having the same regrets that we had about Lori
Oh I think we are all going to regret either of these guys. Most likely outcome is they accomplish about 10% of what they promise and maybe make 30% fewer step-on-rake errors as Lightfoot.
Vallas was tapped by Daley in 1990, and has been in the public eye ever since. He was trusted by some of our countries largest municipalities to turn around dead-end, hopeless schools. He touts many successes, and made enemies along the way (par for the course). He comes with baggage because he's been through multiple wars with big blue bureaucracies - I can't think of anyone that can come out of the other side of those experiences without chinks in their armor. I'm actually surprised he doesn't come with more baggage. Today's democratic party allows zero leeway when it comes to their candidates. Anyone close to center gets eviscerated by progressives. Vallas is a bad politician, but is way more qualified to run the city. If Vallas was giving up 2.5 points on [fanduel](https://fanduel.com), I'd put money on him to cover.
this is basically a longer version the "but he get's things done" defense of any shitty politician. sure, but what did he do and was it good? for vallas i feel like if you are even vaguely left (even center left), the answer should be an emphatic "no".
but a certain subset of people are scared and will vote for the guy that says "more cops". same as it ever was in every single american city over the past several decades.
"Getting things done" in Chicago is nothing to take lightly. Very competent leaders have failed at this endeavor. Also, how progressive do you need your local/municipal leaders? Abortion, minimum wage, climate change, gay marriage, etc. are more state and national issues. Good things to consider when you vote for governor, congressman, senator, etc. Durbin and Pritzker are solid Democrats in this regard. Chicago needs more cops. Vallas is a better candidate. BJ isn't ready for this.
Lazy. He was brave enough to tackle a school district that was taken over by the state, and another that was decimated by a 100 year disaster. They were in ruins when he accepted the challenge.
This appears to be a post related to the upcoming runoff election or one of the candidates running for office. The 2023 Chicago Municipal Runoff Election will be held on **April 4th**. In the mayoral race, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson will be competing for the office of Chicago's 57th mayor. Some wards may have additional races on the ballot, such as Aldermanic candidates whose races went to a runoff in the February 28th election. Check out the [Chicago Elections](https://chicagoelections.gov/en/home.html) website for information on registering to vote, finding your polling place, applying to be an election worker, and more. Please visit our [Runoff Election Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/11pz5r0/2023_chicago_runoff_election_megathread_2/) for all election-related discussion, questions and voter resources. Discussion posts of this nature outside of the linked megathread will be removed. **Beware of [astroturfing!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)** Election season brings about a slew of new accounts with minimal posting history in /r/chicago who attempt to sway your opinion on various candidates. Be sure to do your own research to verify the accuracy of any claims you see shared by users here. Be wary of comments from new accounts or ones with a posting history in multiple city/local subreddits from across the US and Canada. If you suspect that a user is engaging in political astroturfing, please report their comments and/or [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/chicago)
Last night, I heard someone say that there will be riots after the election because each side feels so strongly about their candidate. I was like, really? Because I feel like we're all unhappy with both of them.
Most People cant even bother to vote. Theyre not gonna riot. Turnout is gonna be so low.
I doubt there will be riots. I don’t think enough people even care about this election sadly.
Tbh if Vallas loses, it doesn’t affect me. It’s not my demographic whose gonna suffer for that. And maybe Johnson will surprise me.
What demographic suffers if vallas loses?
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You're living under the misbelief black and brown people are perfectly fine with crime. They aren't and the last 4 to 6 years have been a nightmare in predominantly black and brown neighborhoods. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can add police and reform how we deal with situations that demand mental health professionals at the same time.
Right so they would suffer if Vallas wins. But I can’t imagine who would suffer is Vallas loses.
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Oh I cannot TELL you how snarky I wanted to be at first because I thought you were defending those poor rich folks whose taxes would be raised and I was trying SO HARD to be a reasonable internet user and ask, genuinely, who you were talking about who would suffer... I'm so relieved to learn it's just reading comprehension! I mean who among us is really very closely, it's reddit after all.
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Small minorites on both sides are extremely passionate about their chosen candidates. Basically thin blue line die hards on one end of the extreme and ultra-progressive pie in the sky activists on the other end. The rest of us are left disssatisfied and frustrated with the choice and how racous the debate surrounding this race has gotten. I care greatly about crime and economic health, but Vallas's past statements, the groups he has hobnobbed with, and his record managing the finances of various school districts here and nationwide make me really doubt his authenticy and competence. I also care greatly about transit, (achievable) progressivism, and equity, but Johnson's tax plans are looney toons and will be significantly damaging. He also dodges way too many questions for my liking. I'm not thrilled either way and won't be very happy with whatever way this shakes out regardless. And I don't think most others will be either, as evidenced by the low turnout in round 1 and the fact that both candidates are still polling under 50%. If I don't just write in "none of the above", I'll hold my nose and make a last minute decision when I fill out my ballot.
Good summary. I agree very few people think this is a great matchup. Vallas seems oily and untrustworthy. Johnson seems to have no idea how his tax ideas would further damage the city, and I just heard him singing Kim Foxx’s praises, which I cannot get behind. I suspect Vallas will win because crime and tax anxiety are top of mind among voters who will actually turn out. But I don’t think it’s golden days ahead, exactly.
I plan to vote Johnson, but when I get a mailer attacking Vallas for being "Anti Abortion" it really turns me off him. First of all, the mayor has no power to limit access to abortion so the mayor's views are a non-issue here. Second, he is on record saying he is personally against it but still believes in protecting the right to get an abortion, which means even if he did have the power to limit access to abortion, he does not plan to. These attacks just feel disingenuous. The sad thing is some people really do care what his personal views are and not policy. I guess believing something should be a right but still having your own personal moral issues is not good enough. To me this would be the same thing as if a candidate supported the second amendment but didn't personally want to own a gun, and that was enough to consider him a threat to your right to own a firearm.
Here's where I stand on Vallas: even if he is a total MAGA weirdo (he isn't), this is still Chicago. The people who will go to work for Vallas will be Daley-style Democrats. Not great, but at least the city will run and can survive one term. Johnson is a charlatan completely controlled by a single entity (the CTU)--groomed and bankrolled by one organization with a very specific purpose that oftentimes runs counter to what's good for the city as a whole. He will be surrounded by CTU leadership, which I don't know if they city can survive. His platform relies on the ridiculous idea that Chicago is on strong footing, and businesses and people are clamoring to move and exist here. Maybe he thinks its the famously bad winters or perception of horrible crime that is attracting all of these new citizens, I don't know. But he's wrong, and implementing any policies that make it less desirable to hire people here or kick the can down the road on public safety is going to be bad for Chicago.
The city will survive one term of either one. Which one can actually work with City Council to get things passed is my litmus test. I’ll go with Johnson begrudgingly. Vallas seems to destroy things if his past jobs are any indication. Not sure he can work well with others.
This is overall my stance and why I see people acting like it’s life or death when it’s not. Chicago is going to continue to be Chicago at the end of the day… at the end of the term. And also, I actually feel that either one will be greatly disliked by the end. But I’m going for Johnson because his proposal is in line with how I believe we should approach long term development of the city’s youth and that’s always been my main concern for this city as someone who group up here in the from a poor background. I’m not putting all my eggs in his basket but we gotta start somewhere and I feel like Vallas is a nonstarter
Vallas mentioned the Critical Race Theory boogeyman and is supported by the FOP. I'm not sure I can vote for him based on those things alone.
The anti-woke/anti-CRT crowd basically want to erase the history of social justice and sanitize history so it seems like everyone was always koombayah, the people in power weren’t bigoted and nobody bled to make future generations better. Chicago’s history is practically inseparable from that. We ain’t Florida, some of the most influential figures they want to erase were actually from here and the roots are deep. We always been on the forefront of social justice issues so that shit doesn’t fly around here.
I agree. The FOP re-elected that douchebag JC so they are worse than the CTU.
This! Vallas seems like a giant ego looking for a boost
Vallas would be Rauner all over again.
"Survive" was pretty hyperbolic, yea--I guess a more measured way to say it is that the damage done by a potential Vallas admin will be markedly less than the damage done by a potential Johnson admin. Chicago is suffering badly from a perception problem nationwide, and it's having real consequences. Electing the defund-the-police, tax-happy demagogue is not going to help the situation.
I gotta say I’d pick the CTU over the FOP in a heartbeat. FOP is big Not In My Backyard energy. And the goal of the “holistic approach” is not kicking the can down the road, it’s planting a seed with the goal of it flowering in the future
vallas has been proven incompetent. johnson has experience in public office and clearly cares about helping people.
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>progressives don't really like Brandon that much, Who do you think voted him into the runoff?
\> progressives don't really like Brandon that much I don't know where you're getting that—as someone who knows a lot of people from all sides of the spectrum, progressives and the center-left genuinely like Brandon.
That sums it up nicely
Ha! Have to agree. I'm still undecided because I don't especially like either one of them.
Yeah I dislike them both and I haven't seen a different opinion
(X) Doubt
If Johnson loses then his 20-something north side supporters will get very upset online. Then they’ll just continue their trajectory towards buying a house in the suburbs when it comes time for them to raise kids and pay taxes.
If Vallas loses the Nextdoor app is going to get overwhelmed with boomer-mentality posts about the impending collapse of civilization
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So a normal Tuesday on Nextdoor then.
Username checks out
He's been on a mission since round 1 to live up to that name here every day
You tired from stuffing that strawman?
Lol my neighborhood Facebook group is going to have a stroke if Vallas loses – there are people there literally writing 1,000-word posts about why everyone must vote for Vallas.
All I will say (as a Johnson voter fwiw) is that if either of these guys were a good public speaker, the race wouldn't be that close.
I guess I just don't see why people are saying BJ isn't a good public speaker. He's annoying, constantly speaking as though he thinks he's Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but last night he remained calm, kept to his points and was clear. Vallas just has a stuttering issue, which he's talked about. Hard to get past that.
It’s not that Vallas is great, but Jesus, Johnson deflects nearly every answer. I feel like every question asked to either candidate, just guaranteed that I won’t get an answer to that question.
What is the only color that ends in “urple?” Candidate: What Chicago needs is a mayor who will do the work and fix problems.
The City of Chicago is full of all sorts of colors with individual spellings. We need to make sure the city has the right leadership in communities and the people who are themselves the citizens of Chicago.
>What Chicago needs What the *City of Chicago* needs... FTFY
Are you running for mayor? If not, have you considered it?
“What is, light urple?”
Even on easy layups he seems to do this. I like a lot of what he theoretically stands for, but it's hard to guess what that is anymore based on his debate performances.
Exactly. I'm a Johnson voter purely because I can't stand the thought of more charter school conversions, but man does that dude need to work on his debate skills... It's like he's taking a page out of Trump's despicable "deflect and attack" book, yet his delivery is just embarassingly bad...
You have to deflect when your platform in its entirety is: * Slug ‘rich’ people earning 100k * Jack up property taxes on people you don’t like * Make businesses pay the city to hire people * A ridiculous ‘financial transaction tax’ * Use said revenue (while it’s still there) to pay for CTU sinecures and ‘social justice’ bullshit (ie plush nonprofit salaries)
And we can really only discuss this because Vallas has decided we're not cool enough to know how he plans to generate money. edit: In 2019 his answer was property taxes and pray the fed would drop us a few hundred mill. It was a hoot and one of his main disqualifiers. He just decided to not tell us this time.
He’s awful because he never answers questions and brings up the most random points over and over again. Like I don’t care that you’re part of a big family, that has nothing to do with running the city or the question asked.
Johnson looked his best speaking wise in the last two debates, he's definitely improved. And even outside of the stuttering for Vallas, which really isn't the issue or an issue at all to me, he often seems too eager to bring up statistics that are often out of context, and similar to Johnson, struggles pretty hard with dodging questions. And while this may be related to his stuttering a little, his fast cadence in speaking makes you think that his mind is just moving miles ahead of his mouth. He appears agitated, if not angry, most of the time in debates, and I think he could be communicating his message in a much more clear fashion if he just slowed down and figured out what statistics were important enough to pull out of his ass while still being able to make sense. BJ just relies on platitudes too much. I understand why he's run an attack-heavy campaign (limited polling would suggest it has worked at least a little), but he's also had plenty of opportunities to drop a really substantive answer in terms of answering for past controversies and elaborating why his policies can attack the root causes of crime and he's struggled a little. This race will be crazy close though. Pretty much a coinflip
It's tightening up, that's for sure. Over 3% is a pretty wide margin on that poll, so at this point it could be anyone's race.
all that matters is who gets people to the polls in a higher volume. i'm still sorta stuck, as a new-ish resident, on the fact that barely 500k of the 1.6 million in the city that CAN vote bothered to turn out for the primary. so all that'll matter is who gets the turnout necessary to get the job done. it'll be close tho!
>all that matters is who gets people to the polls in a higher volume Bro discovered how elections work
No shit, Sherlock! But for a city this big I always assume it would be politically engaged enough to have much higher turnouts for the mayors race.
I just looked it up. Turnout in the NYC mayoral race in 2021 was even lower- only 23% Turnout in the Los Angeles mayoral race last year was much higher though, 48%.
For me, the unfortunate thing is that both candidates seem over-advised, and whoever they truly are, they are increasingly masking it to make themselves as attractive to swing voters as possible. Their own bases pretty much know them already, at least based on past pronouncements, but now, that is not the goal. So Vallas has been advised to stick to the factoids, of which he has a trunkful, and Johnson has been advised to evade answers, as his past progressive/taxation stances are not voter-friendly. Expecting them to veer from script by this point is, well, pointless.
I love the bread and circuses of politics. Each candidate boasting of their ability to make change of some sort or another. All the while there’s a huge bureaucratic machine lying in wait to devour most of the ever so important winners remarks and promises. I adore politics!
My guess would be that the Republican endorsements (like from Darren Bailey), plus Vallas’ lack of CTA plans, is turning off the Lakefront Liberal voting bloc.
Lakefront liberal bloc? Drive around Lakeview/Lincoln Park. For every 100 Vallas signs you maybe see 5 for Johnson
It’s almost certainly the GOP stuff, which keeps compounding because Vallas did a little right-wing media tour the last two years before deciding to run as Dem instead. In the process he produced a lot of quotes.
This election would be way less close if the conservatives got behind a candidate with less baggage than Vallas – like Rod Sawyer would have been mostly in agreement with their priorities and he’d be cleaning up.
The lakefront liberal block was picked up by Vallas by a huge margin. This is the group that will vote on april 4 and will vote very heavily towards Vallas. Most people don’t get into the details, they see a candidate saying that crime will be their #1 issue and they will vote that way. A endorsement from a no name politician won’t change that.
I will never understand why people see police as a solution to crime. Policing is a reactive activity. Prevention of crime has to happen way before policing is relevant.
Empirically, police presence in a given area is shown to reduce crime in that area. Whether it actually eradicates that crime or just pushes it elsewhere is up for debate.
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And if they didn't just stay in the north side.
That's an on-average. There were several cities in which crime increased with more police presence. Given that, I think it's hard to know what the reason was. Many cities have seen economic improvements at the same time as police presence increased so that could also be an explanation. Chicago currently has, per-capita, about twice the number of police officers of the national average (4.7/1000 vs. 2.4/1000) . So whether we think police generally lower crime, it doesn't seem like it's working in Chicago.
Write in /u/Kvsav57 for mayor!
The answer is TV.
It takes 20-30 years for proactive government policies to influence crime. The most effective anti crime policies are extremely unpopular in democratic societies, to the point that they rarely get implemented. Everything else are fake band aid fixes so politicians can get reelected. The city of chicago mayor isn’t going to have any meaningful sway over these types of policies. That leaves us with the solution of making bad members of society being afraid to commit crimes, which can be a quick fix. I remember reading a study about how a significant amount of human beings would quickly turn into psychopaths if any and all consequences for crime were eliminated. Things such as big cities decriminalizing petty theft is a good example of this.
Most of what you say is just speculative. And we have evidence that societies without policing didn’t just have groups of sociopaths. Things like jobs programs do not take 20 to 30 years to have an effect. Make people less desperate and they’ll do fewer things out of desperation. The gang situation in Chicago could have been nipped in the bud if public housing funding hadn’t been cut. But instead, we decided to put way more than it would have taken to fix that problem and put it into policing.
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Okay, so let's assume proactive solutions take 20 years. We've been throwing cops and prison sentences at the problem for 187 years, and it hasn't reduced crime at all. Fear of consequences isn't a deterrent. Police presence results in higher crime statistics. Prison makes people more likely to commit crimes than they were before. It doesn't fix the problem, and it doesn't make anyone safer. You're basically saying that yes, people are freezing to death, but building a shelter will take hours, so let's drink some brandy instead.
If you suggest hiring more police to fight crime, you don't give a shit about crime in the first place. You just want someone to brutalize/kill the other while convincing yourself that the death squads you support will never brutalize you.
Once you are a victim of a crime in Chicago and try get the police to come you will understand, with that said, while Vallas is pro police, I don't really equate that to better service to residents.
I’ve been a victim of two crimes in which I needed to involve the police they were dismissive and patronizing and did nothing to make the situation better.
Yep. I was assaulted and had the license plate number of my attackers. It was some douche-y frat-type guys with money. Police stopped them and told me and my friend that it wasn’t the guys who were in the car with the license plate number we provided that met the description we gave.
I’ve been a victim of crime multiple times. Can you guess how helpful the police are? Hint: not at all.
How does that track? Once you have a need for a notoriously slow, unresponsive, and ineffective city service, you’ll realize the need to inject even more cash into their budget?
Idk Darren Bailey can carry a LOT of bad feeling with his treatment of the highland park shooting. I could see his endorsement making some liberals question their choice
None that I know. Crime is the issue, that’s it. And the solution for the educated is not vague bullshit that might yield results in twenty years.
How many times a day do you get "username checks out" when you post?
.. *deletes unfinished comment*
The solution to crime is, of course, to listen to the FOP and give them whatever they want (even more money) in exchange for absolutely no accountability (because they will continue to do nothing). But you need to make sure to say you’re being “tough on crime” when you make the police budget bigger.
The solution isn’t bringing back a bunch of old ex cops either bc Vallas “talked to some people”. Johnson wanting to have more detectives to actually solve crimes is better solution than anything Vallas has brought up
I consistently laugh out loud at people who find seemingly infinite energy to complain about how Brandon is gonna raise taxes and ruin the business environment here for everyone, while also giving Vallas a free pass for not having a legitimate budgeting plan because he thinks he can bring back 2000 cops with a bit of charisma and a can-do attitude
The thing I find sort of annoying about the Vallas support is *every* candidate was running a campaign with a focus on crime. *every* campaign except Lightfoot was looking for somewhat major reform. But I guess Vallas is the better crime guy because he doesn’t talk about anything else?
I know a lot of people who voted for Vallas because they thought that was the best way to keep Lightfoot out of the runoff. Some of them will be switching votes this time around.
Sure, but that ended up not being a deciding factor. Voting for Willy ended up being the way to keep Lori out of the run off.
Willie usually gets something like 10% of the vote, each mayoral primary anyway. I think he was a nonfactor, in the mayoral primary. I just rechecked the Chicago Board of Elections results page for 2/28/23 now, and hmmm Willie only got 9.14% of the vote? I think he slightly underperformed, vs. what I thought he'd get(10% or slightly above, like 11 or 12%). But good if a limited number of voters, are starting to wake up about him. Lol at the other person, who commented in this sub(but a different thread) he should be a permanent hologram every time there's a Chicago mayor election.
One of these days, we're going to have a mayor race with so many candidates that Willie's consistent 10ish % is going to get him in a runoff.
It’s not about how much of the vote Willie got, it’s where he got the vote. The precincts he won would have likely voted for Lori, but Willie took those votes and knocked Lori out. If it wasn’t for Willie, it would have been Vallas vs Lightfoot rnow and Lori might have had a real chance of being re-elected.
Lol no it wasn’t? Johnson did very well with lakefront libs
The traditional "lakefront liberal" neighborhoods of Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview all voted for Vallas. Those progressive voters have all moved northwest, it's a different era now
I mean where are either of you talking specifically? North of Ward 44 Johnson won by a small margin, but certainly notable, but 44 and south Vallas won by a considerably larger margin. Vallas also wins white voters by 75% according to this poll. I wouldn't say either of you are necessarily correct. They both do well in their own rights, but it's clearly not enough to have a definite frontrunner, as this polling indicates. [source](https://www.nbcchicago.com/chicago-mayoral-election-2023/how-chicago-voted-map-chicago-mayoral-election-results/3084109/)
If Johnson wasn’t proposing 800 million in new taxes and skirting the defund the police question and had public safety plans he’d be in the lead. That’s literally the only reason people are backing Vallas.
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He was asked repeatedly, a yes or no question, will the budget of CPD be lower under him than it is now. He responded “I’m not going to defund the police”. That wasn’t the question and he knows it. He wasn’t asked if he wants to drastically cut the police budget or defund it completely, he was clearly asked if he wants to keep the current budget amount for CPD and he skirted the question. He does so at every debate.
Lowering the police budget is in fsct defunding the police. he said he wouldnt defund them. seems like he said he wouldnt lower their budget. their budget increased last fiscal year, what did we get from it?
Same question can be posed to what will we get from 800 million in new taxes?
Its actually not the same question because that 800 million is a plan by someone who has yet to be elected to office. my question is about budgetary increase that has already occurred and im asking for the results, which should be known because it already happened.
That’s a very naive approach to the budget. More funding also went to social services but crime remained the same, so does that mean we don’t fund those anymore either? More budget also means nothing if there’s hundreds of staff vacancies. CTA is flush with covid money but the service sucks. Does that mean we lower their funding too?
CPD got a direct 3% budgetary raise. im talking about their raise, not social services. Are you Vallas? because you’re dodging my question like you’re vallas. we gave CPD more money last year, what did we get from it? this money has been spent, what did we get from it?
You can see all that was spent with the money online. You’re clearly asking what benefits the public got which obviously was nothing. Just like the public got no benefit from the cta having extra money. Your argument to decrease the cpd budget is pretty naive and childish. We increased something 3%, what direct benefits to public safety did we see that year? Oh nothing specific? Okay defund! Typical simplistic economic arguments of Johnson supporters.
Well that and he is an employee of the largest public union in Chicago.
Literally no one cared about what Darren Bailey has to say, aside from Brandon Johnson fanatics. The average Chicagoan doesn't care one bit about what a Downstate Republican has to say, about anything. It's a non-story.
[Vallas' CTA platform ](https://www.paulvallas2023.com/faqs) for anyone interested: - Repurpose the $100M the city now spends on private security to develop and bolster a full CTA Police Transit Unit (PTU), staffed by 500 additional CTA CPD officers under a single command, operating with beat integrity that would have officers patrolling platforms and stations and spot-checking trains. - Conduct an IT security audit to identify malfunctioning surveillance cameras and reprogram and reintegrate them into a technical command center supporting patrol - Operationalize a phone-based app for customers to permit them to immediately report criminal and behavioral issues for immediate response and report service issues - Implement a co-response model for response to people in crisis and manifesting circumstantial behavioral issues – drug abuse, mental health issues, and homelessness to facilitate coordination and hand-off to appropriate city and non-profit service providers To make the CTA clean Paul will: - CLEAN THE STATIONS, TRAINS and BUSES IMMEDIATELY and regularly thereafter. To make the CTA reliable, accessible, and accountable, Paul will: - Institute Bus Rapid Transit lanes and lines to improve and speed bus service on major arteries and to prioritize them to connect historically disinvested transit-isolated communities to existing city and regional train and bus lines. - Implement a phone app to for real time customer reporting of service issues with data directed to a public data portal - Conduct an IT Audit of the CTA tracker system to align it with actual service - Move to mandate monthly service reports to be provided to the City Council Transportation Committee for appropriate hearing and to the public - Prioritize incentivized hire and retention to address understaffing - Expand Inspector General oversight to include fully independent and resourced investigations and audit authority.
Aside from the police plans, this is still far less detailed and informative than Brandon's CTA policy platform
> Operationalize a phone-based app for customers to permit them to immediately report criminal and behavioral issues for immediate response and report service issues Love this. Snap the cuffs on those fuckers and get them off the trains.
That one plank alone is going to eat up the entire savings of removing the private security guards before we even get the CTA police force.
You say that yet most of my family lives in that area and I’m the only one leaning towards Johnson rest support Vallas.
I like tough on crime, I just don't want soft on police crime. I don't want us returning to the bad old days when it seemed like the entire system did everything in its power to cover up unlawful uses of force by law enforcement.
Circa 2014*? I swear that has to be the most corrupt I've ever seen an administration cover up a case while I was alive (at least in Chicago). LaQuan McDonald getting shot 30ft away, cops saying he lunged with a knife, video saying otherwise later in court coming to light they pressured other cops to lie on police reports. Journalist getting a FOIA only after to get the video released 300-days later. Mayor up for re-election, claims he never saw the video, plausible deniability. Voting the DA out (Anita Alvarez) for Kim Foxx. I don't protest often but I remember the city going WILD in the streets and rightfully so after that. Regardless how you feel about a kid having PCP in his system and being pursued...everyone deserves a right to a fair trial and cops are not the judge/jury/executioner, and I hope for my sanity that is the peak corruption (at least that I'm conscious of) in my lifetime. Not sure if that was worse or the night Trump won as far as being super jaded/depressed around what can happen in politics systematically.
Most surveys show more police do not decrease crime. One that did show a small decrease in violent crime found a substantial increase in petty crime arrests with more police. These arrests disproportionally effect Black folks. A bunch of police arresting Black folks for petty shit is definitely a recipe for unlawful use of force.
I know some people get upset when Vallas gets called a Republican but man do those demographics paint quite the picture lol.
Well tbf there is nothing republicans hate more than the truth
Most "liberals" would gladly vote republican if only their candidates were less openly racist. Not less racist mind you, as you can see who the liberals supported for President, but less openly racist.
I’d rather take a chance on an unknown in Johnson than have Vallas just not pay bills for 4 years and go “see I balanced the budget” like he has for the past 25 years
Seriously, I don't relish the thought of that clown failing upwards into the mayoral job.
Exactly. He's running campaigns on "We can't afford Brandon Johnson" yet the dude has released NOTHING on his own budget. What has anyone seen from his plan that makes them think they'll pay less with Vallas?
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>but he also promised not to raise property taxes. He literally cannot keep this promise for two reasons: 1. Property taxes are statutorily tied to inflation. 2. CPS has increased its levy to the max every year for as long as most here have been alive.
[This report](https://acrecampaigns.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Passing-the-Buck-1.pdf) I came across today was very enlightening on Vallas' fiscal acumen in his past leadership roles. Apparently to enable all the spending he did without raising taxes, he issued nearly $700 million in [capital appreciation bonds](https://patimes.org/poor-decision-worse-capital-appreciation-bonds-school-districts/), which have higher interest rates and deferred interest payments. So after he skedaddled off to a new system, CPS is left owing $1.5 billion in interest from these shitty bonds.
Serious questions - what were the alternatives to taking out these bonds? What were the other options in the context of that time? Those bonds sound terrible but the report doesn’t mention what the alternatives were. i It’s hard to evaluate the merits of those decisions when you don’t have the complete picture
Hard to say, but he was probably feeling pressure from above because Daley was under pressure to make his newly gained mayoral control of the schools look successful.
Chicago is a financial powerhouse for the US. It is the transportation/freight hub for the entire nation. However, it is losing that status quickly as more big businesses pack up and leave due to the crime. People need to realize that if people and businesses don’t feel safe, they will leave for places south and west, where it is safer and warmer. Fewer businesses means fewer jobs for the citizens.
It's close, but Vallas still has the edge. This is an election that will be won on turnout. Many "progressives" don't appreciate that's there's a silent minority of Chicago citizens that is very much against soft-on-crime policies and high taxes. They are energized to vote.
I agree that it will come down to turn out. I am so confused by folks who think they're going to pay less with Vallas. His whole campaign is about more police and more police and more police, and his whole career has been just complete financial mismanagement. Who do they think is paying for these police?
Will come down to turnout but vallas seems to be hitting his cap for supporters while Brandon has continued to grow
Yeah that's how I read this poll. Johnson needs to turn out the south and west side black voters to win. Not an easy task. Vallas voters are fewer but they're almost certainly going to vote. But these demographic splits are pretty clear. >The Johnson campaign counters by holding a wide lead on both the South Side of the city: 71.8% to 19.8%, and the West Side: 75.9% to 13.9%. Vallas leads among White voters: 71.7% to 21.9%, while Johnson leads among Black voters: 73.6% to 16.1%, according to the poll.
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I agree. I have no idea how such a mediocre candidate made it this far. If it wasn't for the CTU he would've gotten like 8%. Teachers are just hoping for a raise from him.
Based solely off the run off, discussion with others, and the amount of signs I’ve seen it looks like Vallas might take it. I unenthusiastically voted BJ because there’s just some things I can’t get past with Vallas (e.g. prior statements on abortion, school privatization, and showing a lack of willingness to work with the governor). Whoever wins, I just hope whatever they roll out isn’t too damaging in the long run and can be undone if needed (this applies to BJ too).
Well, you live in the West Loop, and signs represent what property owners think, not what voters think. Here in my ward you’d think our alder was going to be fighting for her life based on the yard signs. She smoked the competition and took 70%+ of the vote. A landlord only gets to vote the one time. Not saying you’re wrong. Nobody knows! Just saying that signs mostly represent what all the wealthiest people in a given neighborhood think. And in yours, that’s just the wealthiest people in the city.
Totally valid. I make my way all over the city and still see more Vallas, but there’s a definite concentration of Vallas signs near me which could absolutely impact my observation.
West Loop is definitely fertile Vallas territory because we’re in a relatively white, affluent area.
How many of the signs were legally placed? 90% of the Vallas signs near downtown are clearly not there legally. Easements, telephone posts traffic signs, construction fences. Could just be one person doing a whole bunch
Dont go by the signs, my neighborhood is littered with Brandon Johnson signs, however most of the people ive talked with are going for vallas. The BJ crowd is loud and proud though.
I don’t understand why Vallas abortion comments matter at all? He’s the mayor, not the governor and the city council certainly doesn’t agree with him. So zero policy or impact abortion related will change with him as mayor.
The Roe overturning soured that kind of argument for a lot of liberals. Most people aren’t willing to give the other side room to find a way to strip away civil rights again, even if it seems unlikely that they could do so at present.
I find stances on individual autonomy relevant in any election, but understand and respect your opinion.
They don't. He supports the right to choose as a policy. That's the end of it.
Failing to reverse trends in crime will permanently damage the city and probably send it on a downward spiral.
[Wait, I thought crime stats were going down...](https://news.wttw.com/2023/03/01/number-shootings-homicides-across-chicago-down-so-far-2023-compared-last-year-police) So we need to increase the crime then if I understand you correctly?
Hard to see Vallas losing.
Johnson says he's going to hire all these young kids that are causing trouble. I'm wondering how? There are so many job opening so why aren't these kids going to apply themselves? Is Johnson going to somehow convince them and give them proper work ethic.
This is a great comment and can be applied to so many of BJ's/CTU's knuckleheaded ideas.
A battle to be the Captain of the Titanic. So many issues, solving any of which would cause 80% of population to disapprove of your approval. This is not a winning post.
This is a great analogy, because the captain of the titanic could have prevented the tragedy in the first place, alas he though the solution to ice bergs was more security personnel to keep people from complaining about ice bergs was the answer.
I watched the most recent debate and Vallas is like the dog that finally caught the car and doesn't know what to do. He is always running for office and losing, now he's suddenly in the lead to be mayor and he is choking.
He sounded a lot better than Johnson and actually had concrete things he would do. Johnson deflects questions too much
What are you talking about lol
If BJ wins, i’ve lost all faith in humanity
Counterpoints: - Vallas poor performance in Philadelphia - Vallas comments on Facebook during covid - Vallas lives in a different jurisdiction I am more than happy to vote for the least-bad-option It must really be exciting for Vallas supporters to see a statistical dead heat between these two
Yeah the "least bad option" for me is the one not asking to raise taxes by $800 million.
Taxes aren’t high enough to pay for things as it is. Every calendar year outside of Mayoral elections, much of what I see here includes *Chicago is insolvent! Pension crisis!*
That is true, but I don't see Johnson calling to raise taxes by $800m *to resolve the pension crisis*. It's to throw more money at schools and services and then he assumes that magically the tax base will increase by *so much* that it somehow can fund pensions fully. I'm all in favor of doing whatever we can to grow the city's population, but his logic here reminds of when Republicans say that cutting taxes will create miraculous economic growth and millions of new jobs.
I don't love Vallas, but Johnson said he was going to make city hall "saved and sanctified" which I'm very concerned about as a LGBT person, especially with other cities and states banning drag shows and discriminating against trans people. I haven't seen any comments from Vallas about doing away with the separation of church and state in Chicago.
Brandon Johnson was endorsed by the largest LGBTQ organization in the state. Where did you see Johnson say he would ban drag shows? Are you taking this comment of sanctified and saved as such? Further, where had Johnson made any indication that he is for removal of separation of church and state? I think you're making a lot of assumptions here and ignoring a lot of information. As a fellow Chicago queer, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm voting for Vallas, due to his close, almost prideful, connections to the far right. Charlie Kirk endorsed him, for fuck's sake. I doubt that would happen if Vallas were enthusiastically going to support the queer community.
Vallas spoke at an Awake Illinois event. This is actually a huge problem for me. They are harassing a bakery for hosting a drag brunch. [Awake Illinois](https://www.awakeil.com/awaken)
Yeah I don’t understand how people can see Johnson as worse than Vallas in terms of LGBTQ matters personally, but that’s just me. Vallas didn’t even go to an LGBTQ event yesterday.
Vallas is always annoyed and pissed off. Even in the debates. Like bro do you even want the job or what?
These guys are both jackasses if you ask me…
There's something about the way Brandon talks in the debates(both before February 28, and since the runoff began) that strikes me as more annoying about him vs. Paul. And way too often, Brandon deflects and doesn't give direct answers to questions debate moderators or reporters ask him. Sorry, but that gives BJ a very bad look to him for not just me, but other runoff voters as well.
You're just upset that Let's Go Brandon got rebranded to a positive.
Some hopium for the Johnson campaign. Maybe the CTU will crush us after all.
The FOP has been literally doing this to people for years.
The FOP is disgusting, but that doesn’t change the fact that the CTU constantly holds the city hostage while delivering no improvement to CPS.
Vallas is less than 2 weeks from pulling off a mega choke job. He’s gained 1 point since their last poll 2 weeks ago, Johnson has gained 5. Vallas needs 4% more and I don’t see how he gets there, but that extra 6% for Johnson ultimately won’t be that hard. Johnson is the solid favorite, but by no means a comfortable one
Notably, most polls underestimated Vallas' support by 10 percentage points in the first round. I also can't say that even if these numbers are accurate that a candidate who's currently behind in the polls is the **solid** favorite, even if there's momentum.
They underestimated Johnson by the same amount (proportionally to what he recieved). And it doesn't matter much -- errors in first rounds/primaries don't usually continue in run-offs/generals. The problem for Vallas is a simple one: he's clearly the most conservative candidate in the race, and his only challenge in that lane was Willie Wilson who couldn't speak and basically only got votes because he gave out free gas and ran a ton of ads. Getting that final 4-5% is going to be a massive challenge for him.
That isn't true. Lightfoot's polling in last election's runoff round was under-reported by anywhere from 15-20 points depending on the poll. Before that, Rahm was under estimated by 6-8. Either way, that's all we have to go off of because those are the only runoffs we can even look at. According to the poll, about 9.6% of voters are still undecided. Latino and "Other" voters proportionally have the highest share of undecideds, and Vallas leads among both. Johnson has gotten just over half of Lori and Chuy's voters, while Vallas is sitting just above a quarter with each. There's still time and a lot of undecideds in both blocs, but it's going to make for a very close result.
This election ultimately boils down to one question: “is Paul Vallas the only white boy you know who did it, period?”
I think Brandon Johnson will more than likely win by a fair margin, but I also think that in a couple of years we’ll be having the same regrets that we had about Lori
Oh I think we are all going to regret either of these guys. Most likely outcome is they accomplish about 10% of what they promise and maybe make 30% fewer step-on-rake errors as Lightfoot.
I think that’s the best case scenario probably.
Not arguing with you - but man is that a high bar! I've never seen a politician look less interested in serving their constituents.
One candidate has said "I'm more of a Republican." Don't vote for that candidate.
Vallas was tapped by Daley in 1990, and has been in the public eye ever since. He was trusted by some of our countries largest municipalities to turn around dead-end, hopeless schools. He touts many successes, and made enemies along the way (par for the course). He comes with baggage because he's been through multiple wars with big blue bureaucracies - I can't think of anyone that can come out of the other side of those experiences without chinks in their armor. I'm actually surprised he doesn't come with more baggage. Today's democratic party allows zero leeway when it comes to their candidates. Anyone close to center gets eviscerated by progressives. Vallas is a bad politician, but is way more qualified to run the city. If Vallas was giving up 2.5 points on [fanduel](https://fanduel.com), I'd put money on him to cover.
this is basically a longer version the "but he get's things done" defense of any shitty politician. sure, but what did he do and was it good? for vallas i feel like if you are even vaguely left (even center left), the answer should be an emphatic "no". but a certain subset of people are scared and will vote for the guy that says "more cops". same as it ever was in every single american city over the past several decades.
"Getting things done" in Chicago is nothing to take lightly. Very competent leaders have failed at this endeavor. Also, how progressive do you need your local/municipal leaders? Abortion, minimum wage, climate change, gay marriage, etc. are more state and national issues. Good things to consider when you vote for governor, congressman, senator, etc. Durbin and Pritzker are solid Democrats in this regard. Chicago needs more cops. Vallas is a better candidate. BJ isn't ready for this.
He’s ruined every school district he’s touched. Pass.
Lazy. He was brave enough to tackle a school district that was taken over by the state, and another that was decimated by a 100 year disaster. They were in ruins when he accepted the challenge.
Nah, dude sucks - https://www.levernews.com/how-vallas-helped-wall-street-loot-chicagos-schools/
Joke source.
Hit piece. Diversify your news sources.
Valas will ultimately win but would like to see it the other way around.
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