Photo caption: BRANDON JOHNSON CELEBRATES at his election night party after forcing an April 4 mayoral runoff with Paul Vallas. (Photo by John Alexander)
Fueled by a last-minute surge in young voters, Brandon Johnson on Tuesday, February 28, overcame the odds in a crowded field of Black candidates, forcing a runoff against Paul Vallas in the Chicago mayoral race and keeping alive the possibility of the city having a Black mayor for a second straight term.
That person won’t be Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who on an emotional night saw her re-election hopes dashed by Johnson, and her chance for re-election spoiled by another Black candidate, businessman Willie Wilson.
Low Black voter turnout and a split Black vote led by Wilson’s strong support from 10 of Chicago’s 17 Black wards limited Lightfoot to winning only 33 percent of the Black vote, while rivals Vallas and Chuy Garcia netted solid wins in white and Latino wards, respectively.
As expected, the mayoral race for the No. 2 spot in the runoff was close, but Johnson pulled out a victory as he made impressive gains across the board in Chicago’s ethnic wards.
In the end, no candidate took the required 50 percent of the vote to win the election outright. But the mayoral race was cut down to two contenders after Vallas took nearly 34 percent of the vote, while Johnson took 20.29 percent. They will go head to head in a runoff on April 4, 2023.
In the close race for second place, Lightfoot came within four percentage points behind Johnson with a third-place finish of 17.06 percent of the vote.
Chuy Garcia came in fourth, taking 13.74 percent of the vote. Wilson was fifth with 9.55 percent of the vote. Ja’Mal Green was sixth with two percent of the vote. State representative Kam Buckner, Aldermen Sophia King (4th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th) finished at the bottom of the race.
With seven Black candidates in the race, there were concerns that none of them would make the runoff or have a chance to become Chicago’s next mayor. But Johnson’s stunning rise was welcomed by many Blacks.
Lightfoot’s fall is an extraordinary one. In 2019, she beat the odds and became the city’s first Black female gay mayor who swept Chicago’s 50 wards in the runoff against Toni Preckwinkle.
But in her first term, Lightfoot broke many promises she made to Blacks and liberals, including the promise of reopening mental health clinics. Many Blacks are still angry, recalling that under Lightfoot businesses on the South and West sides were looted during the George Floyd protests, while she protected the Loop and downtown with national guardsmen and raised bridges.
Contrary to her campaign promises in 2019, Lightfoot fought against an elected school board and a civilian police oversight panel that initially wanted to hire and fire the police superintendent. The handling of the Anjanette Young wrongful search case, and the migrant housing situation in Woodlawn sowed deep distrust in Lightfoot’s leadership among Blacks.
She also had the City Council pass a speed light camera ordinance 6 m.p.h. threshold that generated millions of dollars for the city but disproportionally affected Black and minority communities where many of the devices are located.
Lightfoot additionally opposed the renaming of Lake Shore Drive after the city’s founder, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable; the ordinance passed anyway.
But Lightfoot sought to reinvigorate the South and West Sides with her INVEST SOUTH/WEST initiative, which aimed to pump $2.1 billion in development projects into Black and minority neighborhoods suffering from disinvestment, unemployment and poverty for decades. Lightfoot said often she invested more money in Black Chicago than any other mayor, including Harold Washington.
Many of those projects have yet to materialize and the INVEST SOUTH/WEST initiative was not enough to restore the trust lost under Lightfoot’s leadership.
Hours after the polls closed, Lightfoot spoke at her election night watch party at a City Hall restaurant after she called Vallas and Johnson to concede the race.
“Four years ago, I looked into the camera and spoke directly to young people of color, who look like me, and to every kid who looked like me, when I grew up. And I’m going to do that tonight,” Lightfoot said.
“Obviously we didn’t win the election today, but I stand here with my head held high, and a heart full of gratitude.”
Lightfoot highlighted her term in office, where she said tough decisions were made during the deadly pandemic. She touted her accomplishments, including as mentioned, investments in the South and West sides, affordable housing and special education.
“We took on the machine and entrenched forces that held back the city for far too long,” she said.
“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fight and put this city on a better path, no doubt about it.
“Now as we all know in life, in the end, you don’t always win every battle. But you never regret taking on the powerful and bringing in the light.”
Backed by big unions that contributed tens of thousands to his campaign, Johnson’s star rose during the campaign season. Aldermen Pat Dowell, an ally of Lightfoot, endorsed Johnson, as did Alderman Maria Hadden of the progressive 49th Ward. Congressman Jonathan Jackson and police activist Anjanette Young also endorsed Johnson.
Late Tuesday, Chicago election officials saw a surge in young voters between the ages of 25 to 34, the largest voting population in Chicago with 372,385 registered voters. Multiple sources told the Crusader these young voters supported Johnson at the polls. But the voting bloc of voters ages 55 to 64 had the highest turnout with 98,423 cast or 19.38 percent.
Sources told the Crusader that Wilson will endorse Vallas, not Johnson.
In his speech at his election watch party on the West Side, Johnson thanked the Chicago Teachers Union and said he would work to address Chicago’s historic inequities.
“I know what it’s like to have a long orange extension cord from our window to our neighbor’s window,” Johnson said.
“We are finally going to retire this tale of two cities, and usher in a much better, stronger, safer Chicago.”
Johnson criticized Vallas and accused him of running the city’s teacher pension fund “into the ground” when he was the CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
“Chicago, we cannot have this man as the mayor of the city of Chicago. Our children and our families across Chicago cannot afford it,” Johnson said.
Among Chicago’s ethnic groups, Vallas won 47.46 percent of the white vote after he netted 13 dominating wins in the city’s white wards. He stunned Garcia by taking 29.45 percent of the Latino wards after winning half or seven of 14 Latino wards.
In Black wards, Vallas took 12.96 percent of the Black vote after he won the 27th Ward, which after the ward remap is a Black ward that includes a large and diverse group of registered voters. Vallas also won the city’s new Asian 11th Ward, taking a staggering 58.20 percent of the vote.
As the second-place candidate, Johnson took 18.35 percent of the Black vote, despite not winning a single Black ward.
Johnson surprised some pollsters, taking five white wards where he won 20.84 percent of the vote. Some of those wards include large populations of progressive, liberal voters who re-elected Black Aldermen Matthew Martin and Maria Hadden to the 47th and 49th Wards, respectively. In Latino wards, Johnson took 20.97 percent of the Latino vote, but he did not win any Latino wards.
Lightfoot won 16 of 17 Black wards, but those were not dominating wins. Most of her wins in the Black wards were in the 20- to 30-percentage range. Overall, Lightfoot won just 33.15 percent of the Black vote.
Nearly 55 percent of the Black vote was split between Vallas, Johnson and Wilson, who had 10 second-place finishes in Black wards while taking 19.70 percent of the Black vote. In the mayoral election in 2019, Wilson won 13 Black wards in a field of 14 candidates. This time around, Wilson failed to win any Black wards, but he emerged a spoiler who took votes away from Lightfoot.
According to the Chicago Board of Elections, voter turnout among Chicago’s nearly 1.6 million voters was just over 33 percent, lower than 2019’s figure of 35 percent. Hopes were high that voting in this year’s mayoral race would be higher, with a record number of mail-in ballots, but sluggish turnout at the polls on election day lowered expectations.
Turnout among voters in Chicago’s 17 Black wards was just 27.63, the lowest among the city’s four ethnic groups.
Lightfoot’s loss is the first time an incumbent mayor failed to win re-election since Jane Byrne’s loss to Harold Washington in 1983.
At her election speech, Tuesday night, Lightfoot said, “It’s been the honor of my lifetime to be mayor. There’s more work to do.”
