In a surprise victory for progressive organizing and the future of police reform efforts, Chicago voters elected underdog former education organizer Brandon Johnson as mayor, beating back moderate Democrat Paul Vallas, according to the Associated Press. Johnson beat Vallas, a centrist former budget and public schools chief, despite Vallas’s tough-on-crime messaging, which resonated with moderates and white voters.
The progressive victory happened a bit over a month since voters soundly rejected their incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in the first round of voting in the mayoral election, largely over dissatisfaction with her promises for reform of schools and city policing. With Johnson’s victory, the third-largest city in the country has made an ideological pronouncement about a core tension within the Democratic Party nationally about how to respond to concerns about crime.
Vallas had been the frontrunner for the last few months against Johnson, who got his political start as an organizer with the city’s teachers union. The election pitted two powerful Chicago constituencies against each other: Vallas was backed by the city’s vocal and controversial police union and Johnson was backed by the teacher’s union.
Chicago seems to have defied a recent trend in Democratic big-city politics in which tough-on-crime rhetoric, particularly when pitched toward moderate and conservative voters of color, could tip elections. Crime and public safety have been the top concerns for voters throughout the Chicago mayoral contest, mirroring concerns in local races in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City that cities have seen a rise in crime since the pandemic began, though violent crime rates have since begun to fall in many of these areas.
Crime worries aren’t unique to Chicago, of course, but the feeling of a more violent city has roots in fact: In Chicago, homicides and shootings have continued to trend down this year after drastic rises in 2020 and…
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