Johnson’s comms director Ronnie Reese was fired quietly in late October after a reign of terror at City Hall that involved antisemitism and much more.

As we head into Thanksgiving I have many things to be thankful for — my family, my fine readers here at National Review, all these Grateful Dead bootlegs I have lying around, etc. — but Chicago city governance has never been one of them. After living here for nearly two decades, I now know what it’s like to voluntarily sign up to play on Charlie Brown’s baseball team: one humiliating, dignity-shredding loss after another. But still you persist, because after a certain point resignation kicks in and you convince yourself that your life can at least serve as a dire object lesson to others. The hits really do just keep on coming around here.

Two months ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s entire handpicked Board of Education resigned as one rather than buckle to the pressure he was placing upon them to fire schools CEO Pedro Martinez — a debacle already covered at great length here. No matter; Johnson simply appointed a brand new slate of servitors, this time chosen carefully for personal loyalty. Alas, one month ago his newly appointed board president, Reverend Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, was forced to resign — because, well, as it turns out he really, really hates Jews. (“The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” and “I have been saying this since October 2023. People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!” are but two samples.)

And I didn’t write about it back then, simply because there was too much on my plate to handle with the election at the time. Besides, one can only take so many whacks at the Johnson administration before people start throwing the side-eye and wondering whether you’ve developed a weird mental problem. (I have; it’s called “living in Chicago.”)

Beyond that, what’s another random antisemite in the Windy City? This town has been famous for its racial polarization for decades — in 1988, long before I ever dreamed I would end up here, it was the source of one of P. J. O’Rourke greatest observational gags. In fact, the racial tension in Chicago is so tightly wound that, mere years ago, the city briefly became “MAGA country” in a hate crime so horrifying and improbable that the man who committed it has only just had his conviction overturned on a technicality by the Illinois supreme court, setting him free to terrorize the city again.

So nobody should be surprised that we can now make that two random antisemites in the Windy City now, and curiously both of them lurking within the Brandon Johnson administration. Johnson’s communications director Ronnie Reese — a lifelong friend of his who was a former Chicago Teacher’s Union spokesman and who ran his mayoral campaign’s communications strategy — was fired quietly in late October (it was initially reported as a resignation, but only revealed in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune as a termination) after a reign of terror at City Hall that involved antisemitism and much more, including sexual harassment, grand incompetence, open threats of retaliation, and actual documented proof of retaliation.

The Trib’s report is a blockbuster and should be read in full to savor all the rotten details, but apparently Reese openly boasted to subordinates and peers in Johnson’s communications office that, due to his friendship with Johnson, “he was ‘untouchable’ and could not be fired.” As a karmic janitor, I admire this sort of ironic hubris — I love it when politicos tempt fate boldly and incorrectly, giving me something fun to mop up — but in the short term, he certainly acted with impunity: After three other staffers in the mayor’s press office complained early last year at the start of Johnson’s term, Reese not only had them fired but placed their names on the city’s official “do not hire” list, a professional death sentence for anyone hoping to ever work as a Democrat in city government.

Was Reese handsy with the women? Of course Reese was handsy with the women, why it practically comes with the territory when small-time chancers abuse their power so vulgarly. My favorite anecdote by far, however, is when he walked into the office of a staffer, sat down, and uttered a one-word statement of anger: “Jews . . .” We are not supplied with the surrounding context to this utterance, which in my opinion is all for the better because this way — as an isolated bleat of frustration — it sounds like something the Coen Brothers would script as a character moment for an unpleasant minor antagonist. (He was also accused of “anti-latine” behavior in employee complaints, but that only makes me laugh about the fact that progressives just can’t let go of their alienating gender-neutral coinages. I predict “Latine” will be as popular as “LatinX” was, and therefore strenuously encourage its use.)

In a column two months ago, I noted that for as much as Chicago politics is legendary for spectacular corruption, Brandon Johnson had notably not had any major corruption scandals under his administration because seemed too stupid to attempt one — unless you counted his administration itself as the scandal. (And you should.) I should have figured that he could count on his friends and allies within this administration to pick up the slack for him, and give his snakebitten mayoralty the full spectrum of failures it deserves.