Chicago’s Mayoral Election, Explained
The election happening this month that nobody is talking about.
One of the most important elections of 2023 is happening this month: Chicago’s mayoral.
Because it’s not the home to the federal government (Washington, D.C.), journalism (New York City) or Hollywood (Los Angeles), Chicago sometimes gets overlooked in political and cultural news coverage. So despite being the nation’s third largest city both in terms of population and GDP, Chicago’s municipal elections haven’t gotten much attention.
That’s a shame, because who the city elects to lead it for the next four years is really important. Chicago is facing a number of daunting challenges, and it will need an effective leader to help it overcome them. To name just a few of the city’s top problems:
Depopulation: since the turn of the century, Chicago has been the slowest-growing major city in America. Since 1950, it’s lost 1 million residents as people left for the suburbs.
Loss of Jobs: During the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs left the city, demolishing its working-class character and creating pockets of poverty that remain today.
Empty Real Estate: Many of those manufacturing jobs were replaced with service jobs that built up the city’s core downtown area called The Loop. But when the pandemic hit, previously in-office jobs turned into work-from-home jobs. And now the city center is now full of abandoned and empty office buildings.
Crime and Violence: Chicago saw 698 homicides in 2022 — more than any other city in the country. On a homicide-per-capita basis, it ranks 10th among American cities.
Poverty: 17% of Chicagoans live in poverty, putting it 8th among American cities.
Corruption: Chicago is repeatedly named America’s most corrupt city.
Given what’s at stake, it’s worth taking the time to understand the basics of the upcoming election. So in this cliff notes style introduction, we’ll look at four things in turn:
The rules
The candidates
The dominant issue
The polls
The Rules
Chicago elections are nonpartisan, meaning that all the candidates compete in one election rather than having separate party primaries. If no candidate gets a majority in that first election, a runoff is then held.
Election day is Tuesday, February 28. If a runoff is necessary, it would take place on April 4.
With so many candidates running, and with support between them so divided, a runoff is effectively guaranteed.
Early voting and vote-by-mail started at the end of January.
The Candidates
Lori Lightfoot was first elected mayor in 2019 and is running for reelection.
In her first run, Lightfoot pitched herself as an independent outsider who would tackle Chicago’s notorious corruption problem. In victory, she became the first black woman to become mayor of Chicago.
The shine quickly wore off. In her first term, crime, the pandemic, inflation, racial unrest, and police violence steadily chipped away at her popularity.
Lightfoot’s approval ratings are now mired in the 20s and low 30s.
One recent poll found that 22% viewed her favorably and 54% unfavorably. The same poll found that 71% of voters think the city is on the wrong track.
Now Lightfoot faces the prospect of being the first Chicago mayor to lose reelection in 40 years.
Lightfoot’s big problem is that she’s facing incoming fire from all sides. Both conservatives and progressives resent her handling of crime, policing, and pandemic restrictions — just for very different reasons.
She’s tried to punch back by positioning herself as a common-sense centrist under siege from radicals on both the left and the right. But voters don’t seem to be buying what she’s selling.
Lightfoot also struggles with her personal image and political relationships. Her unnecessary pugnacity and inability to take criticism without lashing out have made her a lot of enemies.
One example? In a trove of text messages that became public, Lightfoot said one Alderman was “full of crap,” another was a “jackass,” and a third was “bush league.” (There’s much more in those texts, including her calling one government official “a dumb, dumb person of color.”)
Paul Vallas, the former head of Chicago Public Schools, is the most viable candidate running on Lightfoot’s right.
After leading CPS from 1995 - 2001, Vallas jumped over to Philadelphia to lead their public school system until 2007. Following that gig, he returned to Chicago as Mayor Richard Daley’s Budget Director.
Vallas is a semi-perennial candidate, having run and lost races for governor, lieutenant governor, and mayor.
His first bid for mayor was in 2019. He lost in the first round that year and then endorsed his current rival, Lori Lightfoot, in the runoff.
Vallas has been running what amounts to a single-issue campaign on crime, calling public safety “a basic human right that must be restored.” He says that the Lightfoot administration has done little to solve the crisis, and that it’s time for a law and order mayor.
Vallas has a 14-point plan that revolves around hiring more police officers and more strictly enforcing the law.
Vallas is the only white candidate and is running in the moderate/slightly conservative lane.
Other candidates have tried to paint him as a right-wing Republican (an untenable place to be in heavily Democratic Chicago) by highlighting a 2009 interview in which Vallas said he’s “more of a Republican than a Democrat.”
Vallas earned the endorsement of the city’s biggest newspaper, The Chicago Tribune.
What they said: “In Paul Vallas, we’re endorsing a smart, passionate and experienced candidate for mayor who long has specialized in doing precisely that.”
Jesus “Chuy” (pronounced “chewy”) Garcia is running as the progressive yet sensible alternative to Lightfoot.
Garcia, who represents parts of Chicago in the House of Representatives, has the highest name recognition of all of Lightfoot’s challengers.
This is in part due to his 2015 bid for mayor, when he made it to the runoff, but eventually lost to incumbent Rahm Emmanuel.
It’s also due to his long political history in Chicago. Before entering the House in 2020, he was a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the Illinois Senate, and the Chicago City Council.
Garcia is running to Lightfoot’s left, pitching himself as the most viable candidate for progressives who want new bold leadership.
His attempt to court Bernie Sanders voters is clear on his website, where he’s replicated the senator’s successful rhetorical formula of Medicare for All by naming his policy priorities things like “Economic Development for All,” “Quality Education for All,” and “Transportation for All.”
This has earned him support from some of the city’s powerful unions. For instance, the local International Union of Operating Engineers has committed over $1.5 million to Garcia’s campaign.
Once Lightfoot saw Garcia rising in the polls, she went after him with an ad attacking him for associating with “crypto crook” Sam Bankman Fried, “indicted pols,” and “pay-to-play profiteers.”
The ad spot is an attempt to make Garcia look like more of the same old corruption that has long bedeviled Chicago politics.
Brandon Johnson, a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, is pitching himself as the true candidate of the left and the only contender who hasn’t abandoned the progressive movement.
Running to the left of Vallas, Lightfoot, and Garcia, Johnson relentlessly hits the other candidates for being insufficiently progressive.
Johnson, a former public school teacher, earned the support of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, which represents over 25,000 school employees in the city.
Johnson’s biggest problem will likely be his stance on crime and policing.
While he hasn’t outright said that he supports the “defund the police” movement, he has made the case for moving money away from police and towards other services for the poor.
Specifically, he has said that he would cut the Chicago Police budget by a minimum of $150 million.
This may not be the message Chicagoans want to hear at a time when so many feel unsafe and want a mayor who can just put a stop to all the crime.
Lightfoot has gone after him for his stance on policing:
“In the case of Johnson, his campaign stands on one platform and one only: to defund the police department entirely. It’s easy to talk about what you would do — it’s another thing to be in the arena, doing the work every day to keep our city moving forward.”
While Johnson might have been a favorite during the summer of 2020, when progressives were energized and angry following the murder of George Floyd, I can’t help but feel like that moment has passed. Even in deep blue cities like Chicago, the anti-police and social-ish agenda that Johnson is championing has limited appeal.
Counterpoint: Johnson doesn’t need to win a majority to make it into the runoff. All he needs is a solid plurality, and if voters are divided by the big field, he could get past with just 15% to 20% of the votes.
The Leftovers: the full slate of candidates is much longer than just these four. I focused only on the ones that have a good shot at making the runoff. But there could always be a surprise or an upset, so if you’d like to read about the other candidates Axios Chicago and Chicago Magazine have a nice rundown of their biographies, and the Chicago Sun-Times published a helpful candidate questionnaire to get a feeling of where they stand on policy issues.
The Dominant Issue: Crime, Crime, Crime
There really is one dominant issue shaping this race: crime and public safety.
When asked what the most important issue was in determining their vote for mayor, here’s what Chicagoans said:
44% said public safety
13% said criminal justice reform
12% said the economy
All other issues (education, immigration, taxes, etc.) were chosen by less than 6%.
When asked how safe they feel in the city, just 4% of voters say they “feel very safe,” whereas 35% said “not safe at all.”
Lightfoot, Vallas, and Garcia all say they want to get more police on the streets. But the differences in their messages are also stark:
Lightfoot has tried to make the case that, as mayor, she’s done a lot to prevent violent crime while also acknowledging that “the work is not yet finished.”
This line may be untenable for most voters who aren’t in the mood to hear her brag about her accomplishments when they see a city awash in violence.
Vallas is the law and order candidate.
One direct-to-camera ad is a nice encapsulation of his message on both public safety and Lightfoot’s failure of leadership. Here’s the script of that ad:
“Crime is out of control and combative leadership is failing us. I’ll work with every community and every part of our city to confront our crime problem. Hold department leadership accountable, put more police on our streets and public transportation, open schools after hours to ensure young Chicagoans have safe alternatives to gangs and violence, and I’ll bring people together to get it done.”
Garcia has tried to replicate Vallas’s message pro-police public safety message with a progressive twist.
Like Vallas, he thinks that Lightfoot has failed and that Chicago needs more police officers.
But he has tried to convey this message in a way that won’t offend progressives, emphasizing the need for more police transparency and the importance of solving the “root causes” of crime. He even gestures towards policies advocated by the “defund the police” (like the need for non-police services like mental health intervention teams) without identifying himself as a member of the “defund” movement.
The Polls
Below is a chart of the most recent polls. I only included the top four candidates in each survey to simplify things. I also bolded the results of the candidates who would move on to the top-two runoff.
The Polling Upshot: This is anybody’s ballgame. All four of these frontrunners have a shot at making it into the top-two runoff, given that there are still a few weeks left in the campaign and the expectation of some polling error. Vallas squeaks by in each of these polls, so he’s probably in the strongest position, but that could easily change.
The Racial Dynamics: If you look a bit deeper into these polls, the racial aspect of this race becomes obvious. In one poll, for example, a majority (56%) of Hispanic voters chose Garcia, a clear plurality (38%) of white voters chose Vallas, and black voters largely split their vote between Lightfoot (25%) and Johnson (16%).
Hypothetical Runoffs: Polling of hypothetical runoffs is messy and imprecise because there are so many unpredictable variables, but they can give an indication of what different runoff scenarios would look like. Here are two takeaways from one poll with hypothetical runoffs:
Lightfoot is in serious trouble:
She loses to Vallas 48% to 35%.
She loses to Garcia 54% to 30%.
Garcia seems to be the strongest candidate in a hypothetical runoff.
He beats Lightfoot 54% to 30%.
He beats Vallas 47% to 36%.
He beats Johnson 47% to 37%.
A Final Thought: The last thing I’ll note is that I wouldn’t be surprised if something totally upends the race in the next three weeks. That could be a political or personal scandal, a mysterious PAC pumping in millions of dollars in ads at the last minute, or a high-profile endorsement. Because they are nonpartisan, municipal elections are more uncertain and volatile than typical partisan elections, where some 90% of the vote is pre-baked. In city elections like this one, the race really isn’t over until the polling places close on election night.
Subscribe to Brain Candy and get the latest on American elections, campaigns, and politics in your inbox every Tuesday and Friday. Thanks for reading — Seth