At the Chicago Sun-Times Fran Spielman reports that Democratic perennial David Axelrod is saying that incumbent Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot may not even make the run-off:
Paul Vallas appears sure to make the April 4 mayoral runoff and Brandon Johnson “has the momentum†to be the opponent, setting up a battle between the “candidate of the Fraternal Order of Police†and the “candidate of the Chicago Teachers Union,†a veteran political strategist said Thursday.
David Axelrod, who has helped elect mayors, senators and the nation’s first Black president, stressed he is not prepared to “write the epitaph†of incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot. But he called the “degree to which she has struggled†to even make it into the runoff one of the biggest surprises of the mayoral campaign.
“She definitely has a very, very steep uphill climb,†said Axelrod, a CNN analyst and founder of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.
“She spent a fair amount of her money trying to take Chuy Garcia down — I think, on the theory that Vallas would be an easier candidate to beat†in the runoff. “If she doesn’t make the runoff … that [wasn’t] money well-spent.â€
Most of her TV spots lately have been attack ads directed mostly against Chuy Garcia with sideswipes on Brandon Johnson.
In one sense Vallas vs. Johnson in the run-off is a dream outcome—we won’t need to worry about Lori Lightfoot, objectively the worst mayor in Chicago history, being re-elected. On the other both Vallas and Johnson are lightweights. Although he’s served in a number of appointive positions, Vallas has never won an election before. Basically, he’s an apparatchik. Johnson’s experience in elective office is only slightly greater. They’re both placeholders. To add insult to injury it’s shaping up as a purely racialized election.
Axelrod is right to this extent: Vallas is a proxy for the FOP and Johnson for the CTU. If that’s not a grim prospect, I don’t know what is.
