Brandon Johnson has dug himself into a deep hole
It isn’t too often a number brings such terrible news, but the latest poll revealing favorable ratings for a select group of figures and institutions dominating Chicago politics is replete with unsettling news for Mayor Brandon Johnson.
A survey conducted by San-Francisco based Change Research shows the results are brutal, and not just for the mayor but for his chief patron, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The bad news does not end there. Though Mayor Johnson's favorable rating is a dismal 14 percent, the favorability percentages for the Chicago School Board, the CTU, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates — the aggregate of Johnson’s most immediate and thorniest quandary — rest immediately above the mayor.
The October 29th poll is the third conducted since January, both of which recorded Johnson’s approval ratings at low points. In a January survey commissioned by school choice group Stand for Children, Johnson earned a parlous 21 percent approval. Months later, as Johnson toasted his first year in office, a survey performed by M3 Strategies showed the mayor had rebounded slightly from January to 28 percent. While Johnson was able to enjoy a bit of a boomlet after the Democratic Nation Convention (DNC) visited in August, his poll numbers have since slipped off the rails.
While it is tempting to define the conclusions drawn by pollsters as an ephemeral moment in which temperamental voters merely vented, considering Johnson’s approval ratings have been consistently underwater, the notion Johnson can look forward to a rebound in the near future is a bit far-fetched.
The reasons for Johnson’s cratering poll numbers are hardly a mystery. Although explaining Johnson’s catastrophic favorability ratings would require book-length treatment, an abridged version should begin with his handling of Chicago Public Schools. His mission issue since becoming mayor, Johnson has made every effort in office to cede quasi-authoritarian control over CPS to the CTU.
Though the problems at CPS are deep and manifold, Chicago’s schools presented few hindrances for Johnson until the ruling CORE caucus at the CTU presented its punch list of contract demands — one of which is a nine percent annual raise — to the Board of Education. An outrageous catalog complete with 706 conditions dressed up as sine qua nons, the contract talks stalled when CPS CEO Pedro Martinez objected to City Hall insisting CPS take out a $300 million long-term, high-interest loan to cover the budget shortfall and the CTU’s demands.
Incensed at Martinez’s unwillingness to yield to the ridiculous plan, Johnson first asked for Martinez’s resignation — a request Martinez rebuffed — then conspired to oust Martinez by applying pressure to the members of the Board of Education to sack the CEO. A gross miscalculation which invited chaos, Board members —all of whom were appointed by the mayor — dismissed Johnson’s duplicity and resigned en masse. Johnson then appointed seven new Board members, one of whom was a disbarred lawyer and another a CORE zealot, who are expected to kowtow to the mayor and dismiss Martinez. Though the mayor has publicly declared his hands are clean of any meddling in Board affairs, 41 aldermen skeptical of Johnson’s equivocating have publicly scolded the mayor’s machinations and the uncertainty he has provoked.
Over and above sowing suspicion and mistrust apropos Chicago’s schools, Johnson’s record on crime is similarly flawed. Since assuming office, Johnson has neither lifted morale among Chicago police officers nor lifted a finger to inspire public confidence in them. A monumental breach of his duties as mayor, Johnson campaigned on a platform of narrowing police responsibilities and handing over some CPD duties to community groups or “violence interrupters,” both of which are untrained in the art of policing.
Though Johnson has routinely stated he supports CPD, in numerous instances since becoming mayor, Johnson has failed to back police legitimacy in the public square. In July 2023, when allegations emerged officers attached to CPD’s 10th District had engaged in sexual misconduct with female illegal immigrants sheltering in station house, Johnson did, with justification, demand an official probe of the charges. Yet when the Civilian Office of Police Accountability found no evidence to support any allegation of a crime taking place, Johnson declined to chime in and publicly bolster CPD by emphasizing the allegations were groundless.
Months later, in March, Johnson’s response to the fatal shooting of Dexter Reed did little to lift the public’s image of CPD. Though police bodyworn video plainly showed Reed opened fire on officers — wounding one — rather than challenge allegations from disreputable community groups which hysterically claimed CPD had deliberately engaged in misconduct, Johnson’s silence over Reed firing at CPD threw oxygen at crackpot “police misconduct” theories and further eroded public faith in the Chicago Police Department. Robbed of the opportunity to paint CPD as aggressors, Johnson used nearly the entirety of his press conference addressing the incident to generate sympathy for Reed and fulminate over the need for police accountability.
Of all his missteps in the realm of public safety, Johnson’s worst blunder has been the decision to cancel ShotSpotter. Though the gunshot detection system provided significant advantages to CPD — reducing response time and allowing CPD to render aid to gunshot victims — Johnson, as well as his CTU handlers, insist the technology is racist. Following Johnson ending the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, in an embarrassing flip-flop, the mayor came to an agreement with ShotSpotter parent, SoundThinking, for the system to remain active through the conclusion of the DNC.
A comic moment, Johnson’s decision to temporarily extend the life of ShotSpotter revealed the mayor’s atrocious negotiating skills. A botched circus act, in the agreement continuing the use of gunshot technology through the end of September, Johnson paid $8.6 million, which was considerably more than the city paid for the technology for the entire previous year.
Johnson’s mismanagement of city finances rivals his incompetence on crime and schools. Though a main feature of his campaign plank was a vow not to raise property taxes, Johnson unveiled a $17.3 billion budget for fiscal year 2025 — up from $16.6 billion in 2024 — to a skeptical City Council in late October. In a classic rookie error, Johnson did not release specifics of the budget to allies in the city’s legislative chamber, specifically the annoying detail the proposed budget contained a $300 million property tax increase. A disastrous rollout, the mayor faced a mutiny among aldermen, 29 of whom signed onto a letter demanding a special session of the City Council to deliberate the city budget.
Greeting media on November 12, Johnson, in a humiliating backpedal, announced the aim of a $300 million property tax increase was to chum the waters, and his initial plan to raise $300 million would be “significantly decreased” in favor of a raft of fees and taxes on cigarettes, parking, gasoline, and liquor. Johnson is also weighing an increase to the amusement tax.
The problem here, of course, is Johnson’s budget plan does nothing to confront the rising burden presented by pensions, subsidies to CPS, police staffing levels, overtime for city employees, and the need to slash Chicago’s bloated bureaucracy. More troubling is the fact the 2025 budget contains no structural reform.
Chicago is fed up with Mayor Johnson
Although polls should be treated as wide open and interpretive, public surveys tracking Mayor Johnson’s favorability ratings have trended downward fairly steadily since May 2023. In the latest poll, the public rendered another devastating verdict on the mayor. While Johnson and his team may be quick to brush off the significance of his collapsing polling numbers, this recent survey reflects the public does not merely consider Johnson to have disappointed or sputtered. On the contrary, the resonant message of this recent poll is Johnson has failed as mayor.
When Brandon Johnson was elected, Chicago residents thought they had cast their ballot for a straight-talking, coherent, no-nonsense politician with new ideas for the Windy City. Today, however, voters have seen the Brandon Johnson act for 18 months and believe it has become tiresome. Residents are wise to the mayor’s rhetorical illusions and stale formulations, his endless blame game, explicit racial appeals, photo-ops, inauthenticity, and an unmatched sense of moral and intellectual superiority.
Voters never expected Brandon Johnson to be a messiah, and while Chicago residents would have stomached Johnson for being mediocre, the mayor has fallen far short of achieving mediocrity. A man wildly, catastrophically, and incontestably out of his depth, Johnson has never come close to meeting the expectations and promises made during the campaign. His lofty language which once captivated Chicago and had such a magical effect on the campaign trail do nothing more now than elicit a roll of the eyes.
With his poll numbers at ebb, one would expect Mayor Johnson to re-invent himself. Despite the need for introspection, a course correction is unlikely. Johnson will have no change of heart. A left-wing theologian, if there is anything we have learned about Johnson in the past 18 months it is the mayor is not a man prepared to admit mistakes. Johnson’s entire approach as mayor has been misguided, fraught with one mistake in judgment after another. Johnson’s policies are terrible, his dishonesty is astounding; he still does not understand on a fundamental level what he gets wrong and what needs to be done to succeed.
If there are any takeaways from Change’s poll, one thrust is the public views Mayor Johnson as a follower, not a leader. After 18 months as mayor, the public recognizes Johnson not as mayor but a progressive activist masquerading as mayor and who has placed progressive ideology — advocating protest and the disruption of city government — ahead of the basic responsibilities of his office. The public, similarly, recognizes Johnson was wholly unprepared to become mayor, he has learned very little in office, and has consistently been overmatched by events since his inauguration. Finally, the Change poll spells out quite clearly the public sees Johnson as just a talker and residents are now tuning him out and turning him off.
