Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Loses Election; Candidates Backed by Police & Teacher Unions Head to Runoff

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now! Co-host Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy. Welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Well, you're there in Chicago, where this race took place yesterday for the mayor of Chicago, a lot of firsts.

You know, you had Lori Lightfoot, who was the first African-American woman mayor of Chicago, the first openly LGBTQ mayor of Chicago. And now she becomes the first incumbent mayor to go down in what, something like 40 years. Can you talk about the valice versus Johnson runoff and the significance of what took place? Yes, Amy. Well, Lori Lightfoot was deeply unpopular, as you mentioned, her first term was less than stellar, I think, from most voters' felt. But this is shaping up now. The runoff on April 4th is shaping up to be a sort of classic battle between progressives on the one hand and centrist and conservative forces in Chicago on the other. Paul Valis is a former CEO, not only of the Chicago public schools.

He was also, he had a stent, a superintendent of the Philadelphia public schools, as well as in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. He's a big backer of charter schools. And obviously, that is a major issue that the Chicago Teachers' Union, from which Brandon Johnson emerges, is deeply opposed to. And he's also had significant backing from real estate and business leaders. And his main issue, really, or, as some people say, his main three issues were crime, crime, and crime. He promised he's promising more police officers on the streets. He touted in last night, in his election night speech, that not only is his wife a police officer, one of his sons is a police officer, another is a firefighter.

And he clearly is seeking the more conservative votes, not only among centrist Democrats, but also among those who consider themselves Republicans in Chicago. And Brandon Johnson, on the other hand, was strongly backed by several key labor unions, not only his own local, the Chicago Teachers' Union and the Working Families Party, but the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of CTU, poured in lots of money as well as did the Service Employees' International Union, the Health Care Division. So this is basically key labor unions were backing Brandon Johnson, as well as progressives. And he was emphasizing that you fight crime as well by investing in communities and in alternatives for young people. So it's really shaping up to be a classic progressive versus conservative battle. The problem is that Valis did get 34 percent of the vote. And so Brandon Johnson is going to have to really be able to get backing from a lot of the others who lost, including Congressman Chewie Garcia, who came in fourth with 14 percent.

Lightfoot is going to do, and her supporters are going to do, is going to be critical. So it's going to be a tough race between now and April 4 to see which vision of urban governance wins out. And do you see this as a message to the country and to Democrats, because this is actually a battle within the Democratic Party, the police union versus the teachers' union in Chicago? Yes. Well, I mean, it is because Chicago is such an important city in the nation. Well, we have been seeing this now play out in a lot of urban races, where a wing of the Democratic Party finds itself, to some degree, more in sync with some views of some independence and conservatives around, once again, putting the emphasis on fighting crime rather than trying to deal with the conditions that give rise to crime and with the social safety nets of urban cities. So we're going to be seeing this play out over and over again. And Chicago could be a bellwether as to how this will develop in the future.

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