Chicago’s Mayor Is Caught in a Trap

Jacobin -  When labor activist Brandon Johnson upset Paul Vallas in Chicago’s 2023 runoff mayoral election, the Left had good cause for optimism. One of their own, a former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) activist, had just won the highest elected office in the third largest city in the United States. And, even better, he did so with an explicit commitment to pursuing a racial and economic justice platform. After the Sanders 2020 campaign, it was a much-needed glimmer of hope for the American left.

And for a time it seemed that the hard work of local activists had finally paid off. Johnson’s victory was made possible by support from the United Working Families Party, founded as a coalition between the CTU and Service Employees International Union Health Care Indiana Illinois and now including a range of other progressive unions, along with the impressive get-out-the-vote efforts of community-based organizations. While Johnson’s assembly of a traditional electoral coalition of blacks, Latinos, and lakefront white liberals was certainly formidable, it would be the governing coalition that would determine whether or not he could fulfill his social democratic agenda. Inevitably, this would mean working with real estate developers and the corporate class writ large to feed the growth machine with financial incentives and corporate subsidies.

This conundrum was hardly unique to Chicago. Brandon Johnson, like all progressive mayors, is caught in this contradiction of urban governance in America; he cannot govern without accommodating the financial, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors. But he cannot accommodate the FIRE sectors and build “the safest, most affordable big city in America.” Examining the challenges confronting Brandon Johnson can help to anticipate the kind of governing constraints that Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who lacks the benefit of an activated institutional base such as the CTU, will soon face from the much more powerful FIRE sectors in New York. If Chicago was a battle, then New York will be nothing less than a full-scale war.