It always catches my eye when an outlet with national distribution produces an editorial about Chicago and this Wall Street Journal editorial on the outcome of the mayoral primary election was no exception. Here’s the relevant passage:
Paul Vallas, the former schools superintendent, was the big winner on Tuesday with 33.8%, and his success shows how much voter priorities have changed. Chicago is a progressive city, and when things are going well voters have the luxury of picking candidates who massage their values. In 2019 Mr. Vallas was an also-ran in the mayor’s race, while Ms. Lightfoot went over well at Lincoln Park cocktail parties.
This year Mr. Vallas’s vow to stop the city-wide crime wave and fix broken schools resonated with voters. In 2022 Chicago’s homicide rate was five times higher than New York City’s and two and a half times higher than in Los Angeles. Those numbers don’t include the other felonies such as carjacking and theft that now plague the city’s streets.
On schools, Chicago voters are waking up to the damage from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) that has become a political colossus focused on wielding progressive power instead of improving outcomes in city schools. About four-fifths of high-school students in Chicago Public Schools are not performing at grade level, but the system keeps graduating them. The union resists reform while using the threat of walkouts and strikes to extort higher salaries and bigger pensions. It resisted reopening schools for months during the pandemic—despite pleas from Ms. Lightfoot. No wonder Chicago has seen public-school enrollment fall by more than 80,000 students in the last decade.
Mr. Vallas will square off in April against second-place finisher (20.3% as of Wednesday) Brandon Johnson, a former union organizer who promised higher taxes and even more money for teachers and failing schools. It’s no exaggeration to say he is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CTU. The teachers current labor contract expires in 2024, and if Mr. Johnson wins the union will be on both sides of the negotiating table.
Mr. Johnson has received $931,308 from the CTU, as well as $1,557,846 from the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. Other unions gave him $1.3 million, but the total of all his non-union contributions is less than $200,000.
The emphasis is mine. IMO “Chicago is a progressive city” is either an exaggeration or a misconception. Chicago is unquestionably a Democratic city but “Democratic” and “progressive” are not synonymous any more than “Republican” and “conservative” are. According to Pew Research 52% of Democrats are moderate, conservative, or very conservative. I would say that most Chicago politicians are plain, old-fashioned “bring home the bacon” machine pols. I’m not sure where that places them on the political spectrum. Probably anywhere that gets them re-elected or puts a dollar in their pockets. Yes, there are some actual committed progressives and, importantly, I believe that those punch above their weight. But Chicago isn’t progressive in the sense that New York, San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle are. Probably not even in the sense that Boston is.
I don’t know who will be elected in April. I know that I will vote for Vallas because he’s the only real chance that Chicago has. I don’t know who his primary contributors are but, if past campaigns are any gauge, they aren’t public employees unions as Brandon Johnson’s very obviously are based on that last paragraph quoted above.
Let’s not lose track of the reality that political contributions made by public employees unions are an inherently corrupt proposition. Their source is tax dollars. When those are recycled into political contributions they create pressure for higher taxes which produces more tax dollars to be recycled into political contributions. IMO there are only two remedies for that:
- Ban public employees unions
- Ban political contributions including in kind contributions made by public employees unions
Since I think there are good reasons for public employees to engage in collective bargaining, I support the second. If Brandon Johnson is elected mayor, he will owe the public employees unions that contributed to his primary and general election campaigns and we should expect him to pay off. That will not help Chicago. Neither will defunding the police.
BTW Paul Vallas’s promise to increase the number of police officers probably won’t help Chicago, either, for two reasons. First, Chicago already has more police officers relative to its population than other major cities and, second, the empirical evidence that more police officers translates into less crime is weak.
My own view is that although more bad mayors can drive additional nails into Chicago’s coffin if the city is to be saved rescue will need to come from Springfield or Washington.
Update
I neglected to mention that in the previous mayoral primary, the one that ultimately led to Lori Lightfoot being elected mayor, she did not get the plurality of votes of black Chicagoans. The plurality of black Chicagoans voted for the most conservative candidate running at that time.
