Chicago Police Commissioner Brandon Johnson and the Los Angeles Times Mayor Paul Vallas: The Case for a Smarter Future of Police and Crime Prevention in a Large City

The election in Chicago is the most recent race in a large, liberal American city which has had a major problem with crime. In the New York City mayoral primaries in 2021, Mayor Eric Adams, who was a police captain and is a democrat, beat out progressive candidates who wanted to crack down on crime. In Los Angeles last year, Karen Bass, a liberal congressman, was elected mayor of the city, in a race in which her conservative opponent ran on a law-and-order message.

Vallas wanted to promote a tough-on-crime message. He said he would place more officers on public transit in order to curb violent crime after a recent spike in crime.

A woman from the West Side who did not want to be named said this week that she was leaning toward Mr. Vallas, because he was more likely to fix things quickly.

Mr. Johnson, 47, qualified for the runoff by defeating several better-known candidates competing for the same liberal voters. A former social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson has spent the last dozen years as an employee of the Chicago Teachers Union, a powerful but polarizing political force that contributed heavily to his campaign. In recent weeks, he has described a public safety vision that goes beyond law enforcement, but has tried to distance himself from past support for defunding the police.

Chicago voters will weigh in Tuesday on the direction of the Democratic Party, choosing between progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson and moderate former city schools chief Paul Vallas in the mayoral runoff.

In a contest dominated by contrasting visions over crime and policing, the outcome could offer a window into how voters’ views have evolved in one of the nation’s largest cities in the four years since they elected a reformer, outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, whom they are now replacing after she failed to advance to the runoff.

It’s not clear whether results will be known Tuesday night. Chicago counts mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, and the number of ballots left to arrive and be counted could be larger than the winning margin on election night, if the race is as close as many strategists and political observers in the city expect.

Are you kidding me, don’t you care? The color of Chicago politics in the runoff between the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Amy Vallas and Amy Johnson

Vallas and Johnson are competing to replace Lightfoot, whose bid for a second term ended after she finished third in the nine-candidate February 28 first round.

Lightfoot had sparred with two of the most powerful forces in this year’s mayor’s race: the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Vallas, and the Chicago Teachers Union, which backed Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer.

The city has been involved in an ongoing battle over how it handled the Covid-19 pandemic, a period during which violent crime increased and schools were shut down.

After the death of George Floyd, Johnson supported the idea of de funding the police, which was popular among progressives in 2020, but that idea has since been taken away as violent crime increases in cities like Chicago. Top Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have long rejected the slogan.

Johnson now says he does not want to slash police spending. He has said he would promote 200 new detectives, arguing that solving more crimes would increase Chicago residents’ trust in police and deter crime.

But his base of support, more conservative and more White than other contenders, carried risks for the runoff. Chicago is a diverse, overwhelmingly blue city, with 83% of its electorate backing the Democratic ticket in the 2020 presidential election.

Almost half of the electorate who did not vote for either candidate in February didn’t vote for Vallas and Johnson in the runoff. They were interested in the Black and Latino voters who were outside of Johnson and Vallas’ support, not only in the progressive base, but in White ethnic neighborhoods.

Vallas featured Black mainstays of Chicago politics, including former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and former US Rep. Bobby Rush, in his closing television advertisement touting his Democratic credentials.

Johnson has argued that Vallas is too conservative for the city, highlighting donations Vallas’ campaign received from business interests and Republicans, as well as digital ads paid for by a PAC with ties to former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“When you take dollars from Trump supporters and try to pass yourself as a part of the progressive movement – man, sit down,” Johnson said at a rally in Chicago with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders last week.