The New Mayor of Chicago’s Ruin
6th April 2023
Adam Smith once wisely remarked that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There is much less room for ruin in a city, as Portland, San Francisco and Seattle have proved in recent years, and Detroit, Memphis and Gary, did even earlier. Now, Chicago has decided to join that dismal parade.
The Windy City was already marching toward the abyss under its outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot. She was elected four years ago with over three-quarters of the vote. This year, she got so few votes in the first primary (about one sixth) that she was eliminated from the runoff. That second election, held on Tuesday, pitted Brandon Johnson, an African-American organizer for the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, against Paul Vallas, a Greek American who had led several major school systems around the country. Vallas’s résumé was far more impressive than his achievements in those jobs. His bumbling campaign against Johnson revealed those shortcomings once again.
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The corruption suffusing the latest Chicago mayoral election was perfectly legal and hiding in plain sight. Virtually all of Brandon Johnson’s funding and his legions of campaign workers came from the Chicago Teachers Union, plus several other public-sector unions. Those union friends went door-to-door singing his praises and putting up campaign signs all over town. It was a very effective strategy.