Mayor Brandon Johnson slams uphill effort to recall Chicago mayors

Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday blasted a nascent effort to establish a legal tool for voters to recall Chicago mayors, calling it “disingenuous” and saying it is backed by “extreme right wing” political rivals.

The mayor’s comments came after a Lakeview resident earlier this month created a political committee with the Illinois State Board of Elections seeking “to establish a recall mechanism for the Chicago Office of Mayor.” State law does not currently provide a legal apparatus for voters across Illinois municipalities to recall mayors.

“Voters get an opportunity every two years, four years,” Johnson said, adding that the “extreme right wing” is “not pleased” with the diversity of Johnson’s cabinet.

“It’s some dude from the suburbs who is mad about the diversity and the formation which we have put forward,” the mayor said, before laying out several of the progressive initiatives his administration has passed in his nearly one year in office, including a paid leave policy and abolishing the city’s subminimum wage for tipped workers.

While Johnson said the effort was started by a suburbanite, the man who created the committee is 58-year-old Daniel Boland of the North Side’s Lakeview neighborhood. A technology salesman who said he votes “straight down the middle,” Boland is organizing the push not just because he disagrees with the mayor’s policies, but because he “believes in democracy, direct democracy,” he said.

“If the mayor is taking this personally, he shouldn’t, because he ran on transparency and accountability,” he said. “This is about good government. It’s not about left-wing or right-wing.”

Regardless of his motivations, there’s little doubt that it’s a steep climb to get the referendum on the general election ballot in November.

Under Illinois law, Boland would need to collect 56,463 valid signatures on his petition by Aug. 5 for the recall mechanism question to appear on ballots in Chicago this fall. Boland acknowledged Wednesday that he currently doesn’t yet have any signatures.

If the question makes it onto Chicago’s November ballots, a majority of voters would need to approve it and then recall supporters would likely have to collect an even larger number of signatures as part of another petition drive before a formal recall vote could be placed on a subsequent ballot — likely years into Johnson’s first term.

Previous mayoral recall talks have gone nowhere, including when state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat, floated the idea of recalling then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel following his handling of the police shooting death of Laquan McDonald. In Buffalo Grove, though, a trustee was successfully recalled in 2010.

Boland said he’s been motivated to move forward with the recall effort because he’s unhappy with Johnson’s efforts dealing with youth crime and the ongoing migrant crisis.

“The mayor should be accountable to the people of Chicago not just on Election Day, but every day,” he said. “And that’s true for every mayor.”