Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson defeated Paul Vallas on Tuesday to become the 57th mayor of Chicago.

Vallas told his supporters gathered at his election night party that he was conceding the election.

With 99.2% of precincts reporting, Johnson had 51.42% of the vote to 48.58% for Vallas — a margin of 15,822 votes out of 552,223 cast.

After an exhausting, five-week battle for the heart and soul of Chicago, the race see-sawed back and forth as votes were tallied Tuesday night. Vallas took an early lead, only to have Johnson overtake him.

Vallas conceded defeat at 9:45 p.m. He took the podium at the Hyatt Regency Chicago to tell his cheering supporters that he had called Johnson to offer his support to the mayor-elect.

“I’m honored and humbled by all of your support. I ran for mayor to bring this city together and it’s clear, based on the results tonight, that this city is deeply divided. So tonight—even though we believe every vote should be counted, I called Brandon Johnson and told him that I absolutely expect him to be the next mayor of Chicago,” Vallas said.

When some of his supporters shouted, “No,” Vallas admonished the crowd.

“Please, please, please. It’s critically important. This campaign that I ran to bring this city together would not be a campaign that fulfilled my ambitions if this campaign is gonna divide us more. So, it’s critically important that we use this opportunity to come together,” Vallas said.

Jason Lee, a senior adviser to the Johnson campaign, stopped short of claiming victory, but was feeling good about Johnson’s chances.

“We outperformed on the lakefront. The turnout was good. We outperformed on the South Side in terms of the margin. It could be the case that some of the voters on the South Side who felt like they couldn’t vote for us didn’t vote at all. We feel good about the margin,” Lee told the Sun-Times.

“It’s a close race. But we also think the absentees are good for us. Based on our understanding of how the absentees came in on Feb. 28, how our votes are growing and just some modeling that we’ve done on where those absentees are from, we feel very confident about the absentee votes.”

The Associated Press called the race for Johnson Tuesday night.

Lee refused to say whether or not Chicago would have to wait for late arriving mail in ballots to be counted before knowing definitively whom its next mayor will be.

With 90,000 absentee ballots uncounted and a 52% return rate, Johnson, a paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, could become the next mayor by winning a narrow majority of those outstanding votes. Several analysts predicted he is likely to win as much as 70% of the uncounted absentee votes.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

“We have to win to declare victory. And we believe in counting every vote. That’s just our commitment. Win, lose or draw, that was always gonna be our commitment,” Lee said.

“There’s a lot of votes outstanding. We want those votes to be counted. But, when the math becomes undeniable, then we’ll do what’s necessary so that the city can move forward and we can begin unifying the city.”

Former CTU President Jesse Sharkey, who has gone back to teaching 9th grade civics at South Shore high school, said it’s “profoundly gratifying” to see a CTU-backed candidate on the cusp of taking City Hall more than a decade after social justice-oriented leaders took over the union.

“Remarkable. It’s indescribable,” he said. “We put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears into organizing work. And that’s meant something. And for the young people who are coming up in this movement, I hope that they have a similar sense of possibility.”

Sharkey said the city’s progressive movement will still have to fight for recognition — but that’s a new, welcome fight.

“We need to figure out how to actually invest in those neighborhoods and pull people into the political process,” Sharkey said. “I don’t think we have enough power. I think the people who make corporate opinion, I think corporate money and I think the bureaucracy of the city is largely going to be against that program. And I think we’re going to have to organize people and try to build support for a program that’s going to change things.

“We have a whole city and a whole future ahead of us.”

Retiring Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), a Vallas supporter, called late-arriving mail-in ballots a “new phenomenon” that usher in a “new era in regards to voting.” Tunney was resigned to having election day drag on into Easter weekend.

“Less than 50% of the people actually come to vote on Election Day. ... The Vallas campaign knew it needed to be organized on early voting, on vote by mail,” Tunney told the Sun-Times at what was supposed to be a victory party for Vallas at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

“I’m not confident but I’m comfortable with the fact that we know where we’re at tonight and it was closer than I would expect by same-day voting. But I think that we got to plan to win hopefully in the next couple of days.” 

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Just a few months ago, Johnson was a relative unknown, even to some voters in the West Side district he represents on the Cook County Board.

He owes his meteoric rise to the millions in contributions and thousands of campaign foot soldiers provided by the CTU and its affiliates, SEIU Locals 1 and 73, SEIU Heathcare, AFSCME Council 31 and United Working Families.

They literally proved their worth. Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), a Vallas supporter, has called them the “new machine.”

That support in money and people allowed Johnson to rise above his greatest vulnerabilities, including his comments on the concept of defunding the police, criticism that his $800 million tax plan would drive jobs and businesses out of Chicago, and Vallas’ slam that Johnson has “never run anything” bigger than a classroom.

“There’s still a value to be had by mobilizing an army of field workers. Not quite as much as back in the day when half the people working in the field could give you a garbage can the next day. But, to have that visible presence, there’s value in that,” said Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), who endorsed Vallas.

“That requires a level of dedication and passion that exceeds people being paid to do it. Most of the United Working Families [and CTU] field army have both. They’re being paid. But, they also believe in what they’re doing. They believe in ending capitalism and replacing it with socialism. They believe in defunding the police. They believe in closing the jails. It’s the way they want to re-shape society. They believe it’s possible. And they’re fired up.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot spent millions on negative advertising in Round One to eliminate U.S. Rep. Jesus Chuy Garcia (D-Il.). She waited until it was too late to realize that Johnson was the real threat.

Lightfoot clearly wanted to handpick Vallas as her opponent, firmly believing that Vallas had a “ceiling” that would make it difficult for him to get over the 50% hump.

Tuesday’s results show that Lightfoot may have been right about Vallas’ ceiling, even though it was Johnson who benefitted from it.

Despite an avalanche of business contributions that allowed him to outspend Johnson by a 2 to 1 margin, Vallas could not overcome his own statements — on talk radio, Facebook and Twitter — that left voters in this overwhelmingly Democratic city believing he is an anti-abortion, pro-voucher Republican.

Not even a slew of endorsements from high-profile Democrats featured in Vallas’ television commercials—including retired Il. Secretary of State Jesse White, retired U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — were enough to erase that perception.

Johnson drove home the point by portraying himself as “the real Democrat” in the race.

The contrast between the two runoff opponents could not have been more stark when it comes to the future of policing, public education and municipal finance.

It was, as political strategist David Axelrod put it, the “candidate of the Chicago Teachers Union” vs. the “Fraternal Order of Police” with Chicago’s future political direction hanging in the balance.

Decrying the “utter breakdown of law and order” in Chicago, Vallas vowed to fill 1,700 police vacancies, in part, by luring back officers who have retired or transferred to other departments and running day and night classes at the police academy.

He wanted to relax restrictions on food chases, restore morale by ending merit promotions and switching police to a four day workweek and restore beat integrity by pushing resources to the district level.

A former revenue and budget director under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, Vallas vowed not to ask Chicago taxpayers for “one more penny” until he has scoured the $28 billion in city and local government agency spending under the mayor’s control to determine it was being spent wisely.

Johnson spent weeks pointedly refusing to commit to fully funding the Chicago Police Department’s $1.94 billion budget or filling 1,700 police vacancies. Instead, he vowed to cut the police budget by $150 million by streamlining the number of “non-sergeant” police supervisors, closing CPD’s Homan Square facility, and ending the three-year, $33 million ShotSpotter contract.

The cornerstone of Johnson’s anti-violence strategy is the $800 million in new or increased taxes he wants to impose to help bankroll $1 billion in new spending on public schools, public transportation, new housing, health care, mental health and job creation. Vallas has called Johnson’s plan a job killer that will drive businesses and residents out of Chicago.

As election day unfolded, early turnout indicators appeared to favor Vallas.

Of the top ten wards for turnout at mid-afternoon, six were Vallas strongholds: the 19th, 41st, 41st, 45th, 43rd, 44th and 2nd Wards. Only two of the top 10 wards — the 46th and 48th — were wards that heavily favored Johnson.

The turnout in several majority African-American wards also appeared to be disappointing at mid-day. And turnout in Hispanic majority wards was as anemic as it had been on Feb. 28.

But the age factor was a key indicator that tilted toward Johnson, with young voters rallying to his cause.