dave wasserman has seen enough. brandon johnson elected.

[mopinko]

phew. way too close, but..

Link to tweet

[nycbos]

1. As an adopted Chicagoan...

... I was disappointed in both my choices in the runoff. I had strong reservations about both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Vallas.

Last year Johnson said "defund the police" it's not just a slogan it's a political goal. They're more than 1000 vacancies in the patrol division. He then said "I never defund the police and I never said it was my goal." And now he says "I won't reduce the police the budget by a penny."

He seems to follow the Aaron Burr school of campaign work. "Talk less smile more don't let them know what you're against or what you're for."

Chicago right now, to my understanding is a growing financial technology center. I could be wrong, but I think he's proposing a financial transaction tax. Something like that might make sense at the federal level, but if you impose it on a city level and you're the only city that has one. Those jobs are gonna go somewhere else. He doesn’t seem to get to invest in people you need to keep a tax base.


My reservations about Vallas were that he is too close to the FOP and he certainly has rubbed shoulders with some unsavory characters. He later said he didn't know what they were about before going to their events. The best thing you can say about that as he doesn't do a due diligence background check about the people he rub shoulders with.

I ended up voting for Vallas. I am disappointed but not that disappointed if you catch my drift.

[mopinko]

2. i'd like to defund the chgo cops.

they do a shit job, and their union is a protection racket. but defund doesnt mean zero out.
it means not sending cops to do a social work, it means closing the homan torture site, and it means getting rid of the cops that cost the city millions w their brutality. it’s be good to get them out of the schools, too. but that’s not gonna happen.

it’s a shame he wasnt able to articulate what he meant cuz everyone insisted shoving a slogan down his throat. ppl bent that to mean what they wanted it to mean, and not what the ppl who sent that up in the 1st place meant when they said it.
he said that right after george floyd, and has tried to clarify over and over.

i sure hope those 800 cops who threatened to quit keep their word.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. While I'd Like To See Them Quit, Too...

...they won't.
It was an empty threat coordinated by that crook Catanzara. Those 800 cops aren't giving up an average base salary of $75k, plus overtime, plus benefits.
It was just cop bluster & they'll now claim they never said it.

[mopinko]

5. the saddest thing about the whole cycle

was how much of a sad rerun is was of the washington/epton race.
back then white folks had a reason for fear, as realtors were out there panicking ppl, and folks could see their property values dropping. that none of them blamed the realtors for that makes me sad to.this.day.

cops made the same threat then. i dont recall hearing about a single 1 of them quitting.

you’d think we would have learned…

[nycbos]

10. If you have to "articulate what you mean"...

... when you say defund the police you already lost the argument.

The people who decide national elections in this country (the Obama-Trump-Biden voter in PA, WI, MI) hear that and they think less public safety for me and my family and then they stop listening. It gives the appearance that Democrats don't take crime seriously.

Cook County already has a States Attorney who talks about "mutual combat"

https://abc7chicago.com/kim-foxx-lightfoot-mutual-combatants-combat/11100664/

Adding Johnson to the mix doesn't help.

[mopinko]

11. well, not every important idea can be boiled down to a bumper sticker.

ppl deliberately misunderstood it. they gave in to fear. and the other side pounded that wedge.
but most of us long timers have a good reason to want something to change w the cops. f the police would maybe have been a better slogan.

[nycbos]

12. Dismissing people's concerns and fears as illegitimate is a bad strategy.

One of the things I learned working on the Obama campaign, is before you could persuade someone to see things from your point of view you need to address their concerns on their terms. Sometimes the phrase "I hear you" can go a long way.

Of course things need to change with the cops. But right now (to my understanding) cops are trained to be "warriors" and have a "everyone's out to get you attitude" ingrained in them from the moment, they step foot in the academy. To fix that problem and to make the change inneeded in policing is going to cost money. To say otherwise, is a denial of reality, or just a lie.

[mopinko]

13. in chi, like in most of america, crime is a proxy for race.

and i’m just not gonna get dragged into this any farther.
everything that is wrong w policing in this country is wrong w chi cops. they’re unaccountable and they were intent on keeping it that way.
bad cops cost the city millions every year. wrongly accused rot in cook co jail. mentally ill ppl end up in jail cuz there’s nowhere else to send them.
they do have crisis teams that do a better job w mental health issues, but they’re still assholes to ppl in crisis. this i know 1st hand.
their union is corrupt af. fuck the police is a valid political stance.

teachers, on the other hand, ought to have power in the city, since schools are the #1 issue determining where ppl live. cps is likewise a disaster area. but i see no way to make chi a better place that doesnt include the schools.

[nycbos]

14. Every thing you just said is true.

I wouldn't trust the Chicago FOP as far as you can throw them.

But if CTU isn't willing to consider consolidating schools were there not enough students to run extracurricular activities many of those students are in at risk areas that shows just the lack of flexibility and you wonder if they can work with them to make things better.

[mopinko]

18. i'd posit that if everyone is on the same side,

compromise is possible. schools got closed under vallas to help the charters. the city wasnt negotiating in good faith, so the teachers would be stupid to lay down.
and i will say this- i’m the rare dem who supports non-profit charters. for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the flexibility to close them when they go bad or arent needed.
but usually it’s the self interest of adults that is rly at stake.

i have almost as many gripes about cps as i do about cpd. but none of those problems can be solved when what we’re rly talking about is under the surface.
i think it’s better to have a mayor who is aligned w the council and i think we have some great newer member atm.

the bottom line of brandon’s campaign was about justice. w/o justice, we are doomed.

[nycbos]

19. There are a lot problems in Chicago no doubt

I don't think you and I differ that much.

As I said I was "disappointed but not that disappointed." I just don't think Johnson as a clue. You have to be competent to get justice. I would have supported Garcia in a runoff against Vallas without hesitation.


The biggest difference between Chuy and Brandon is that Chuy seems to know what he's talking about. Not too different than Warren and Sanders.

[Hortensis]

17. Usual pivot from saying whatever's required to get primary support

from a demo that cares enough to vote to getting the larger electorate to vote for him? That seems to have been a really nasty primary. Someone who doesn't pay his utility bills and racks up over $1000 in parking tickets is not going to sell well to people who expect a mayor to pay his bills, but he managed to edge out at least two others going for the progressive vote.

Also, let's face it, getting the support of fringe groups is a way to primary victory for outsiders who can't get mainstream support. As we know, too often once in power, they turn out to have misrepresented their agenda.

We'll see. I've read that Chicago has a way of pulling its government toward the center. I just hope he has the ability to do well that Chicago needs so badly.

[mopinko]

20. those comments were before the primary, from before he declared.

i am not completely positive, but i have seen a couple clips on twitter that appear to be from the wake of the floyd murder.
but ppl sick of cpd IS NOT fringe. we already have more cops per capita than, i think, any city in america. their corruption is obvious. giving them a fan on the 5th floor would be a wedge this city couldnt survive.
cpd and cook county jail, et al, are a huuuuuge chunk of the city budget. but the thing is, crime goes up and down, and it is always an issue in the muni elections regardless. it’s not actual crime, it’s perception of crime. in my ward we had a 50% drop in violent crime at 1 point, but it was just as big an issue that year as it was in his other 5 elections.

those petty bills are a sad rerun of the washington/epton race. harold failed to file his 1040 a couple years in congress and everyone thought that would sink him. they were a great talking point, but in the end, they didnt work.
i think he will do fine. i think he has a council mostly on the same page. and i welcome ctu to the table. the adversarial relationship w city hall all these years serves no one.

[Hortensis]

26. Well, these terms... There are at least two kinds of "progressives."

Last edited Wed Apr 5, 2023, 11:51 AM - Edit history (1)

One's roughly the 81M Democrats and those who voted with Democrats in 2020 to make good change happen.

The other, mercifully far fewer, see Democratic progressives as a mountain that must be marched over and defeated before the real change only they can accomplish can become possible. They never do, of course, but election after election most never alter their behavior, which is a huge identifier of them. And why they keep doing things like calling for "defunding" the police, which is proven to reliably suppress the vote for candidates on the left, i.e., Democrats.

Btw, I think we should assume Johnson was positioning himself for a primary end run around more mainstream candidates long before he announced, that his calls for things like "defund" and black nationalism were how he grabbed the attention and support needed to claw his way up out of oblivion. Others were running as "Progressives" also.

I hope, for Chicago's sake, that he's a basically competent and sensible man who'll work with all the assets available to him. If not, he likely won't be there long. Of course the usual groups will be howling in disapproval at whatever whoever was elected did long before it would have a chance to show its efficacy.

[mopinko]

27. with all due respect, chicago is a thing unto itself.

i bump into that sort of thing too. there was maybe some of that in garcia’s loss.
but this ‘battle of the unions’ is, i think, a thing that could only happen here. and it is very much about race. that’s the real divide in this town.

i dont know too much about his tenure on the co board, but since it didnt get any play, it must have at least been adequate. generally speaking, i think we have a good county board.
but most of the unions here are suffering, and getting tired of fighting for their existence. and i dont think most of them have a very high opinion of the cops, and the clout they have. seiu worked as hard for brandon as ctu.

also, the cook co board is already pretty ‘woke’ when it comes to criminal justice. so, he comes at it from a place of knowing the terrain. the sheriff is a good egg who tries his damndest to do right by those in his custody. there’ve been strides, imho.
i think he’s well placed to attack the root causes of crime and violence. we’ll see if the old guard lets him.

[Hortensis]

28. It takes a lot of guts to try to pull that together.

As you say, he's been on the board for some years, so he knows the terrain, and I'm putting my hope in that. And that you're right. I could never have said that about the LA County sheriff when we lived there (definitely to the contrary), so that's heartening to read.

I never got to spend any real time in Chicago, but long ago when my employer was paying to schlep me around it became my "favorite" city to visit. Shallow, of course, but that's still how I think of it.

[mopinko]

29. well, we're still the city that works.

but there’s plenty of hoods i’d rather live in my car than stay for long. when i moved here i landed in a hood in the wake of white flight. it’s still ugly over there.

love my hood, tho. most diverse zipcode in the country, the former alderperson always said. not sure if that exactly true, but…. neighborhood school had 32 languages spoken in the homes when my kids were there.
my sister thought i was insane not to run back to the burbs, but i raised amazing kids here.

dont plan to ever leave.

[Hortensis]

30. Our kind of place. Did similar in L.A. long ago and missed it ever since.

Our current district in GA is rated as among the most conservative in the country, but I don't think that's quite the same thing. (Close to our kids and fishing.) We've been in the top 5 many times; I've never been so perversely satisfied as when we were rated 1 or 2, but people like us are trickling in... Our district's kind of extreme diversity.

[mopinko]

3. i dont think he's talking about a transaction tax

he’s just wants to find a way to hit the fat cats harder than the rest of us.
a head tax has been discussed, which we used to have. rahm ditched it for votes.
cboe already moved most of it’s operations to kansas city. but i agree a transaction tax at the city level is a bad idea.
but it’s not taxes that google cares about, it’s workers. and we have a great high tech work force.

hopefully he gets the assessor to stop giving sweatheart deals to the big property owners. THAT is why MY taxes went up 25% this year.
that there are chgo alderman w a side hustle in tax appeals boggles my mind.

and if there is a union that OUGHT to have more clout, it’s the teachers, not the fop.

[nycbos]

6. Outside income for Alderman should be banned. You won't get any argument from me.

In the primary moderator a asked a question during a debate about a school on the southside with only 64 kids. The school can't run any extracurricular activities. These kids probably need those more than most. The teachers union opposes any school consolidation. When asked about the school, and he would consider consolidations Johnson just Vallas for the situation.

He worked as an organizer for the teachers union while being a Cook County commissioner. I have no problem with the CTU having a voice in the mayors office. I have a big problem with the CTU running the mayors office.

A tax on employees for business is a very bad idea especially since downtown has been devastated by Covid. Not helpful for trying to get workers to return to the loop.

Raising taxes on hotels is also a bad idea since Chicago already has one of the highest hotel taxes in the country. Not good for tourism.

[mopinko]

7. nobody likes taxes, but til someone comes up w better idea...

when we had a head tax, it made zero difference. they come to the city for better jobs than can be had almost anywhere. they can pay a fair share.

right now big property owners pay pennies on the dollar compared to what i pay on my house.
fairness. it’s about fairness. and promising to hire a bunch of new cops is spendy af.

[nycbos]

8. That was before the pandemic.

Now more people are working from home.

The CTA has been ravished. Terrible service, ghost busses. You see people without any traces of embarrassment trying to bum smokes and lighting up inside train cars. Again I never saw that before COVID.

In a perfect world what I am talking about wouldn't matter.

[mopinko]

9. well, you're not wrong.

but fixes to any of that costs money. there’ll be a lot of decisions to be made, and i’d rather the old white guys not be the 1s making them.
the council is so young these days. many are on the same page as brandon. if i had to pick a ‘closer’ for the argument, i would say the fact that they’d be working together would be it.
vallas would have been a return to the council wars days.

[Sympthsical]

15. Your sentiments mirror a lot of what I heard

I'm a native no longer living there, but I discussed the election quite a bit with friends who were voting. I think the most striking assessment I heard from a friend was, "It's like choosing between malice or incompetence." He ended up voting for Johnson.

I was surprised to see Vallas come back, because I remember when he was CEO of schools and didn't have a lot of positive feelings toward him. Then Jesse White endorsed him and thought that was interesting. Durbin endorsed Vallas as well. So there were some heavy Democratic establishment bats going to swing for him.

If I were still living there, I think I would've gone with Johnson, but it would've been a decision I actually gave a lot of thought to and probably wouldn't land on until close to the election.

I just . . . don't like Vallas for a variety of reasons. But, I'm not crazy confident Johnson will know what he's doing either. Still, I think this is the better outcome. Maybe.

I guess everyone will find out.

[nycbos]

16. Re: "malice or incompetence."

That's an excellent description.

[mopinko]

21. my biggest issue is that vallas was pretending.

he was just lying about who he was. he’s not a moderate. he’s a republican.
money from devos? c’mon. awake illinois?
it’s like we said about tfg- he may not be a nazi, but nazis think he’s a nazi.

[Sympthsical]

22. And I think that's what my friend meant by malice

The sentiment this morning on my social media timeline from friends there seems to be relief it's not Vallas, but not joy that it's Johnson. There's a perception the CTU is going to be an even bigger problem. It was kind of like "Do you want cops with a man inside or the CTU?" And let's be honest - no one wants Chicago cops to have more influence.

But the CTU is their own thing. More a political machine than an educational one these days. I have two different friends who were teachers in the CPS who bailed because they just did not want to deal with it anymore. They thought it became more about the adults than the students. I don't disagree. So, my sphere of friends aren't crazy enthusiastic.

Ironically, one of those who left CPS went down to Florida to teach. That is some frying pan to fire shit if ever I've seen it. She just tapped out because of DeSantis this past year, and now she's working against that whole mess.

[mopinko]

23. i had 5 kids in cps. i could go on all day.

but honestly, beating up teachers/schools was a winning issue for mayors for a lllonnnggg time. if we supporter teachers instead of attacking them, maybe things would change.
imho, the road to a better chicago goes through the classroom. they deserve a prominent place at the table. i’m glad they got it.

[Johnny2X2X]

24. Vallas was supposed to win this

This is an upset.

[mopinko]

25. yup

i kept thinkin- these polls smell like red wave bs, and i was right.