Before I leave the subject of Mr. Vallas, I wanted to make one final point. I genuinely wish he had been elected mayor of Chicago. He, not Brandon Johnson, reflects what Chicago needs right now.
However, the piece to which I linked illustrates why he was not elected. He ran as a technocrat. In today’s political semiotics, technocracy itself has become a cultural marker associated not with competence but also with elite managerialism. That is easily recoded by opponents as right-wing, corporate, and ultimately “Trump-adjacent”.
He made the mistake of confusing how one governs with how one must campaign. He should have governed as a technocrat. Chicago no longer votes primarily on programs or competence; it votes on identities and narratives. He should have run as a Greek. That would at least have given voters steeped in identity politics a culturally acceptable rationale for supporting him.
