Authored by Susan Quinn via AmericanThinker.com,
After Lori Lightfoot was voted out of the mayor’s seat in Chicago after her calamitous tenure, I dearly hoped that the residents of Chicago had come to their senses about progressive mayors and would vote for someone who had some understanding of fiscal responsibility and the role of a big-city mayor.
It was not to be.
The mayoralty of progressive Brandon Johnson has been, to say the least, a disaster.
Even as he’s witnessed his rejection by Boards, Committees and the residents of Chicago, he continues to double down on failing policies.
How did he get himself into such a mess?
He began his professional career as a teacher, but realized he could get more done from a political position:
First, he was elected to the county board, with the help of the board president, herself a former history teacher. Then he decided to run for mayor. The [teachers’] union endorsed him. It donated $2 million to his campaign and sent out its army of door knockers to spread the word about him. In an upset, the hip young teacher won, against an opponent with a better-known name who outspent him 2-1.
Once Johnson linked up with the teacher’s union (CTU), his future was bright. Brandon and the union are joined at the hip.
How bad has Johnson’s governance been?
He’s decided to take control of the Chicago Board of Education, due to his dispute with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Pedro Martinez:
According to published reports, the current board had backed Martinez in a dispute with Johnson over the CPS budget and contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union – for which Johnson was once an organizer, and was a major financial supporter of his campaign for mayor.
Martinez is opposing high-interest loans the mayor wants CPS to take out to support teacher raises being negotiated with the CTU, at a time when CPS is facing a $500 million deficit for the 2025 contract year. The board did not include the loan in the approved CPS budget for the 2024-25 school year.
Johnson demanded that Martinez resign, and Martinez refused. Instead, Johnson has reconfigured the Board of Education. Instead of Johnson selecting all the board members, he will be able to select ten of them, and ten will be elected by the citizens.
Since Martinez is refusing to leave, Johnson can simply tell the citizens that he selected to fire him.
Easy.
The entire Chicago Board of Education will resign later in the month as a protest against his actions against Martinez.
Johnson seems to be incapable of contradicting his patrons on the CTU, and the price tag just keeps getting larger and larger.
But the list of his irresponsible decisions doesn’t end there.
Here’s a sampling:
Mayor Johnson is deeply enmeshed in his own “blame game” and false optimism: he says the state’s reduction of the city’s property tax revenue is to blame; he blames the Chicago Board of Education for not passing tax legislation for the public schools. He’s presented no plan for the taxes he was trying to raise, $100 million, for housing the homeless. He’s lost the support of the business community.
And he insists on wearing “rose-colored glasses”:
But at his news conference after the council meeting, Johnson refused to accept an alarmist view of the future. He also would not say what his Plan B would be should this progressive revenue not come through in time for the 2026 budget cycle.
‘How about we just focus on what we want?’ Johnson said when asked whether he’s ruled out trying to pass a future property tax hike, after aldermen threw his latest attempt back in his face.
‘I want you all to stay positive, OK, because the people of Chicago and the state of Illinois really require that. Look, I know it’s easy to go back and forth about this tax versus this tax, but people have sold the people of Chicago out for too long, and they have kowtowed to the interests of the ultrarich.’
Keep your chin up, Mayor Johnson, and just keep blaming your predecessors and the ultrarich. We’ll see where that gets you in the next election.