Chicago mayoral candidates sparred over public safety in a televised debate Thursday night ahead of the April 4 runoff, which has become the latest big-city mayoral race to test voters’ views on crime and policing.
Paul Vallas accused progressive rival Brandon Johnson of backing the “defund the police” movement, while Johnson charged that Vallas’ plans to ramp up hiring of police officers would be slow and unrealistic.
Vallas and Johnson, both of whom say they are Democrats and are competing in a nonpartisan contest, advanced to the runoff after the February 28 primary, when incumbent Lori Lightfoot finished third, dashing her reelection hopes.
Chicago is an overwhelmingly Democratic city: 83% of its voters backed President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. But Vallas and Johnson are on opposite sides of the party’s divide over police policies.
Vallas, a more conservative former public schools chief backed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, has focused his campaign on a pro-police, tough-on-crime message. He has vowed to stem an exodus of city police officers and put more cops on Chicago Transit Authority buses and trains.
Johnson, a progressive Cook County commissioner who is endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, has at times backed the “defund the police” movement. He now says he would not cut police spending but would seek to invest more in impoverished areas.
In Thursday night’s debate, broadcast on ABC 7, Vallas repeatedly highlighted Johnson’s previous comments in which he had broadly backed shifting public dollars away from policing and toward community-based programs.
“I’m not going to defund the police, and you know that. You know that. I have passed multi-billion dollar budgets, over and over again,” Johnson said.
Johnson has said he would promote 200 new detectives to…
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