For Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, budget defeat, challenges that preceded it threaten reelection chances

Just over a year before the 2027 mayoral election, Brandon Johnson is in danger of becoming a one-term mayor — and his defeat in the most recent battle over City Hall’s 2026 budget is only part of the reason why.

The coalition of progressive unions that helped put him in office remains fractured. His tax-the-rich agenda has produced more rhetoric than results. Animosity lingers from tactics the Chicago Teachers Union used to intimidate alderpersons who rejected Johnson’s proposed corporate head tax.

The mayor’s relationship with an emboldened City Council has never been more strained, nor has the trust between Johnson and alderpersons been so diminished.

Johnson's public approval ratings remains stuck in the mid 20s. And Johnson's campaign war chest has a scant $1 million, even as his own political director says $13 million will be needed to bankroll the mayor's uphill battle for a second term.

The Chicago Teachers Union and its affiliates contributed more than $5 million to Johnson’s 2023 mayoral campaign. But the mayor’s former union could be hard pressed to match that amount when its resources will be diverted to 20 elected school board races and one citywide race for board president.

‘He’s fumbled the ball repeatedly’

No wonder political heavyweights who have only flirted with running for mayor during previous election cycles are now lining up to challenge Johnson. They see and smell blood in the water.

Veteran political consultant Tom Bowen said it’s “very difficult to get the trust of the voters back when you’ve so thoroughly eradicated it,” even at the Chicago Public Schools, which was supposed to be Johnson’s strength.

“He’s fumbled the ball repeatedly… He had to replace the entire school board that he chose. He had to replace the schools CEO that he said, `Go ahead and stay.’ And he still didn’t get what he wanted,” said Bowen, who worked for former Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot.

“If it’s a referendum on him, that race is over. It’s hard to see how voters view this race as anything other than, `Do I want four more years of this?’ “

Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee argued that his boss stands a “better chance of being elected mayor than anyone else” because he has a success story to tell.

“You have the safest year since 1965. Economic growth as measured by the busiest year that we’ve had at O’Hare and the most hotel bookings we’ve ever had," Lee said. “If people want to think what they want to think about our viability, let them think it. It’ll just make it easier for us to win… We’ll do what we have to do to win."

Veteran political consultant Delmarie Cobb considers Johnson a “longshot” to win re-election because “everybody is coming after him” and he doesn’t have much money in the bank.

The budget battle that saw conservative and moderate alderpersons reject the mayor’s corporate head tax and push through their own city budget “weakened” Johnson, she said.

"It’s the second or third defeat of one kind or another... He’s got to talk about what he’s accomplished and show that it’s more than what he lost," Cobb said. "He also has to raise money. If Brandon isn’t raising money, he’s sending a signal that he’s weak. He may not make the runoff if he doesn’t start."

Johnson’s 2025 budget squeaked through the City Council after a stalemate that saw alderpersons unanimously reject the mayor’s proposed $300 million property tax increase and refuse to support a property tax hike of any size.

Another lost budget battle for Johnson

This year’s budget battle was worse, even if Johnson did end up getting “98% of what he wanted,” as Lee put it.

Instead of facing reality when the Finance Committee led by his handpicked chair Pat Dowell (4th) rejected the head tax, Johnson fought until the bitter end to save it.

Had Johnson followed through on his threat to veto the $16.6 billion budget, renegade alderpersons would have had the 34 votes needed to override and avert a government shutdown.

But the mayor neither signed nor vetoed the budget. He simply allowed it to take effect, looking weaker still, then lost his chief financial officer, Jill Jaworski, to a job at Navy Pier.

The political equivalent of a punt was announced at a news conference outside the mayor’s office, an event disguised as a victory rally.

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates spoke at length, only reinforcing Johnson's activist approach to governing and the outsize influence that, critics contend, the CTU has on the mayor it helped elect.

Ald. Desmon Yancy (4th) said he took directly to the mayor his complaints about what he said were “lies” the teachers' union spread about him on social media during the budget battle.

“He wiped his hands of the situation. He said, `I don’t have any control over what my allies do,’“ Yancy said of Johnson. “I expected something different from him. I expected him to be the adult in the room."

Lee made no apologies for the CTU’s pressure tactics, saying the mayor’s allies needed to play hardball to combat attacks from the Common Ground Collective, an advocacy group bankrolled by business leaders.

“If they believe in working people and the fact that corporations need to pay more, and they’re trying to make sure that view gets a fair hearing, and you’ve got another side spending ten times what they’re spending to try to lie, negate and undermine — what are they supposed to do?” Lee said of the CTU. “Politics ain’t beanbag. No one was targeted more than the mayor."

Independent Council ‘a good thing’

During the WBEZ program, "Ask the Mayor," Johnson said the City Council's declaration of independence is a good thing.

"I don't believe a rubber stamp City Council has ever benefited Chicago — whether it's the bad parking meter deal or mental health clinics being shut down," he said.

Former City Council dean Walter Burnett (27th) believes Johnson has benefited politically from President Donald Trump’s relentless campaign against Chicago — as evidenced by the 400,000 Instagram followers the mayor has added over the last six months.

The budget battle looks like a mayoral defeat, but looks can be deceiving, Burnett said.

“When Harold [Washington] had that challenge and they voted against him, it didn’t make him weaker. It made him stronger. More people empathize with you. They’re helping him to build his base,” said Burnett, who was Johnson’s choice to run the Chicago Housing Authority. Burnett is unlikely to get the job, which remains unfilled.

“The mayor is attacking the rich. The more he fights, the more he looks like he’s fighting for the people.”

Burnett expects the class warfare battle to escalate during the mayoral campaign, assuming that Johnson chooses to run.

“If one of the rich guys runs [against him], they’ve got to spend a lot of money defending being rich because he’s going to beat them up for being rich,” Burnett said.

Lee minimized the impact of SEIU’s decision to turn on Johnson after the CTU tried and failed to take over classroom assistant jobs held by SEIU Local 73 members. SEIU affiliates together contributed more than $5 million to Johnson’s 2023 mayoral campaign.

"He’ll be the only person in the race with a track record of making working class Chicagoans the center of his politics,” Lee said. “Everybody else whose name is floated has taken money from the same people who oppose working people.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) says he’s running for mayor and plans to stay in the race, even if Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias uses the $6.2 million in his campaign war chest to throw his hat into the ring.

The field of mayoral challengers may also include retiring state Comptroller Susana Mendoza, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, Ald. Bill Conway (34th) and a few lesser-known candidates, like lobbyist John Kelly Jr. and businessman Joe Holberg. Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) and State Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) could also be part of the mix.

If Giannoulias pulls the trigger and brings SEIU and trade unions with him, Bowen said he expects the secretary of state to “suck up so much oxygen, it will be hard to breathe.”

Former 40th Ward Ald. Pat O’Connor said Johnson “has a difficult road,” but it would be a mistake to write him off “based on the constituency he caters to in Chicago,” and the system that requires a runoff between the top vote-getters if nobody gets 50%-plus-one.

“It’s difficult to justify the ownership the Chicago Teachers Union has in him. His lack of accountability to all Chicago. His inability to work with the City Council. He doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson for all that he has gone through,” said O’Connor, who served as former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Council floor leader.

“But having said all of that, I don’t think that knocks him out of the box."

The budget battle should have weakened Johnson, but may not diminish him at all, O'Connor said.

“When you go into a coffee shop, how many people are talking about the city budget vs. ICE? Nobody missed a paycheck. Nobody got laid off. I don’t think people see any harm in it," O'Connor said.

"They see the mayor as incompetent," O'Connor continued. "But the constituency that has [supported him] won’t leave him because of that. If anybody deserves not to win, he’s the guy. But he could be in the runoff.”