Democrats trying to brag about the city during the convention are ignoring the injurious effects of union-dominated governance.
Democrats trying to brag about the city during the convention are ignoring the injurious effects of union-dominated governance.
C hicago mayor Brandon Johnson opened the Democratic National Convention on Monday with a call for putting his city at the center of the conversation.
“Together, we can build a better, brighter future, and there’s no better place to start that than in the greatest freaking city in the world, the city of Chicago,” he said.
I agree that the city is the greatest in the world, but it’s also among the worst-managed. In the city that perfected the political machine, a new machine has tightened its grip and inflicted pain: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). And now, residents are pushing back.
Last year, Johnson won the election for mayor of Chicago by 26,000 votes, the smallest margin of victory in a Chicago mayor’s race in more than a century. Johnson previously worked as a paid lobbyist and organizer for the CTU, which was his campaign’s No. 1 funder. His win was a stunning coup not only for the radical caucus that took control of the CTU in 2012, but also for the American Federation of Teachers, in which the CTU holds the powerful title of “Local 1.”
When introducing Johnson at AFT’s annual convention in Houston last month, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said AFT president Randi Weingarten is “responsible for the political transformation in the city of Chicago. . . . So when I tell you that the work of the CTU is also the work of the AFT, I’m not kidding. I have receipts.”
On education, crime, and the economy, here are the receipts from Chicago.
First, the schools. Shortly after his election Johnson gave telling remarks in an interview with the Economic Club of Chicago. A moderator asked, “What grade would you give the current [education] system and why?” Johnson replied, “I personally don’t give a lot of attention to grades. . . . My responsibility is not simply to grade the system, but to fund the system. That’s how I’m ultimately going to grade whether or not our public-school system is working: based upon the investments that we make for the people who rely upon it.”
On Johnson’s grading scale, Chicago Public Schools are a roaring success.
Since 2012, district spending is up 97 percent, and CPS now spends $30,000 per student per year. But reading and math scores have declined 63 percent and 78 percent, respectively, in the same period. The CPS school seeing the largest budget increase this year is Douglass High School, which serves just 35 students in a building originally built for more than 900. Douglass will see its full-time staff roster balloon to 32 from 23 positions next school year.
With a new union contract on the line, Johnson is seeking to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. This comes after Martinez’s office revealed the cost of the CTU’s demands would bankrupt the school district, and rebuffed efforts from the mayor to approve what amounted to a $300 million payday loan to make up the shortfall. (CTU president Stacy Davis Gates called Martinez “insubordinate.”)
This is unsurprising behavior from a mayor who sits on both sides of the bargaining table.
Next, crime. In Chicago it is stubbornly high, and not falling as fast as in other parts of the country. Year-over-year robberies are up 21 percent, assaults are up 7 percent, the homicide-arrest rate hit a 24-year low between May 2023 and April 2024, and violent crimes in CPS schools were up 26 percent this school year with a record-low arrest rate (8 percent). Johnson ordered his Board of Education to rid all schools of police officers, even those that wanted them, and ended the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a technology that alerts police to gunshots. (Notably, the ShotSpotter contract was extended through the Democratic National Convention.)
Finally the economy. After he ran on “making Chicago the most pro-worker city on the planet,” Johnson passed a new paid-leave mandate and phased out the tipped minimum wage. The Chicago metro area now has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and 11,000 fewer Chicagoans have jobs now compared to when Johnson took office.
But Chicagoans are waking up to the consequences of CTU dominance. And they are pushing back.
First, this spring Chicago became the first major city in the nation to reject a “mansion tax” referendum. The mayor’s signature tax-hike initiative, dubbed “Bring Chicago Home,” would have tripled taxes on all real-estate transactions over $1 million. Voters did not trust Johnson with new money and rejected the measure. After this stinging defeat, the mayor’s office wisely introduced a “Cut the Tape” reform package making it easier to build new housing.
Second, Cook County elected moderate Eileen O’Neill Burke in the Democratic primary to replace controversial state’s attorney Kim Foxx. The CTU had never endorsed a state’s attorney in its more than 100-year history until it endorsed Foxx, twice. It also endorsed Foxx’s chosen successor, Clayton Harris, who lost to Burke.
Third, the Chicago City Council pushed back on the mayor’s decision to shut down ShotSpotter with a rare, veto-proof-majority vote that could allow aldermen to decide whether to keep the technology on a ward-by-ward basis.
Finally, surveys are showing a seismic shift in voter opinion. Recent polling commissioned by the Illinois Policy Institute shows that among likely Chicago voters, Johnson’s rating is 36 points underwater (27 percent favorable vs. 63 percent unfavorable).
Johnson’s poll numbers are unprecedented for a Chicago mayor so early in his term. And the union’s brand is becoming toxic. This is one reason that Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker, while acceding to most union demands, has rejected the union’s recent calls for a bailout from Springfield. In November, Chicagoans will decide whether to reject CTU-backed candidates in the election for ten open seats on the school board.
The day after Johnson was given a hero’s welcome at the AFT conference in Houston, Weingarten introduced Vice President Kamala Harris for her first speech to a union since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Spreading Local 1’s model of governance through federal policy-making is a frightening idea. Take it from Chicago.