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Mayor Johnson could learn from the divisive policies of former mayors of Boston and Detroit
In the 14 months since he was sworn in as Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson has revealed much about himself. To the lament of residents, what we’ve seen is troubling for voters who had hopes Johnson would unite the city.
When Johnson finds himself in trouble — much of it his own creation — the mayor falls back on race to defend himself.
Last October, when asked about the migrant crisis and if he had plans to visit the southern border, Johnson lashed out in a hysterical tone:
“And I'm doing all of that with a black wife raising three black children on the West Side of the city of Chicago. I am going to the border as soon as possible.”
Shortly after his outburst, Johnson cancelled his planned journey to the southern border.
Yet despite his family constraints, the mayor traveled to Los Angeles in February for a African American Mayors Association meeting — he was accompanied by four bodyguards and three other city employees. The mayor was just 150 miles from the southern border, but rather than finding time to visit, Johnson instead, presumably with his entourage, attended the Grammy Awards in downtown LA when he was away from the conference.
After the long July Fourth weekend, when a staggering 109 people in Chicago were shot — 19 fatally —a defiant Johnson, at a Monday press conference that received national coverage, vowed that he would not alter his failing "root causes" approach to law enforcement. Not only did he retreat to race as he defended himself, but the mayor discovered a new villain, the-late President Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency in 1974.
“Black death has unfortunately been accepted in this country for a very long time,” the mayor said. “We had a chance 60 years ago to get at the root causes. And people mocked President Johnson, and we ended up with Richard Nixon.”
Nonetheless, the day before he uttered his goofy remark blaming Nixon for pandemonium on Chicago’s streets, at Pride South Side — away from the media spotlight — the mayor pushed back even harder on race, with inflammatory language.
“Now look, white supremacy is real, y'all. I'm gonna say that one more time. Because in case the city of Chicago don't [sic] know, you got a black mayor, with a black wife, black children, on the West Side of Chicago. And all of these other administrations that shut down our schools, that shut down public housing, that raided the pensions, that sold off the parking meters, that sold off the Skyway, those people ran this city to the ground, and now they expect a brother to fix it in a year. Well, guess what, we're off to a great start and I look forward to fixing their mess, building up our community, for the next 23 freaking years.”
There is so much wrong with Johnson’s rant, it is difficult to ascertain where to begin regarding setting the record straight. As for the underfunded municipal pensions and the egregiously irresponsible parking meter and Skyway leases, race did not figure into anyone's calculations when those schemes were hatched. When looking at Chicago's government, it is never a wise idea to rule out corruption, but sheer incompetence among public officials for bargaining away city assets is far more likely to blame for the city’s financial catastrophes than race.
In 2004, during Richard M. Daley's administration, the City Council unanimously approved the 99-year Chicago Skyway lease. Four years later, in a 40-5 vote, Chicago aldermen approved the 75-year parking meter lease deal. Even Brandon Johnson knows the Chicago City Council has been a majority-minority body for years. No level-headed person can claim that "white supremacy" is to blame for those Chicago financial blunders — and the same goes for the pension millstone.
Mayor Johnson’s “Us-versus-Them” rhetoric is poisoning political discourse on both the national and local levels. A generation ago, ideological opponents saw the other side simply as misguided or wrong. Now they too often view each other as evil. In his 20-year run as mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young governed with us-versus-them as his political compass. There are many other mayors, some of them white, who misruled from that same playbook.
In the first half of the 20th century, in four separate single terms as mayor of Boston, and one as governor of Massachusetts, James M. Curley, an Irish-American machine Democrat, utilized the us-versus-them approach to governing. With Curley, it was the Irish and other white ethnics against the old money Brahmins.
Like disgraced former Chicago alderman Ed Burke, Curley was a charming raconteur, who was difficult, but not impossible, to hate. Like Burke, Curley was thoroughly corrupt. Curley’s career was the stuff of novels. The Last Hurrah, a bestseller penned by Edwin O’Connor in 1956, was a barely disguised look at Curley’s life. The book’s lead character, Frank Skeffington — portrayed by Spencer Tracy in the John Ford-directed movie — offers some insight on, to use O’Connor’s words, “tribal chieftains” like Johnson.
In one passage, Skeffington explains himself to his nephew, Adam, as an election approaches:
“You see,” he said, “my position is slightly complicated because I’m not just an elected official of the city; I’m a tribal chieftain as well. It’s a necessary kind of dual officeholding, you might say; without the second, I wouldn’t be the first."
“The tribe,” said Adam, “being the Irish?"
Skeffington replies, “Exactly.”
It’s becoming quite clear that Mayor Johnson views himself in a similar manner, only with Chicago’s black population as his ethnic core rather than the Irish. As for Curley, like Coleman Young, he drove his city into the ditch. Boston recovered by the 1970s; Detroit is still trying to dig its way out of the rubble.
Chicago needs a mayor for all its residents. Regardless of their race or ideological beliefs. “Brother” Brandon Johnson, so far — after 14 freaking months — is not that mayor. Johnson continues to act as if he is a Chicago Teachers Union agitator standing on a picket line railing against “the system.”
