One of the centrist talking points is electing a progressive mayor destroyed Chicago so New York shouldn't do the same. But by one of the centrist's main metrics (they talk about crime constantly) things are going better than usual under Brandon Johnson. news.wttw.com/2025/05/05/c...
Hi, Chicagoan here. Brandon Johnson has very little to do with the drop in crime because the CPD doesn't listen to Brandon Johnson. Our issues with him are more functional; like his failure to handle the migrant crisis or be balloon loan he wants to take out as a gift to the CTU. He's not good.
He is terrible - he wants us to pay for the bear stadium, waste one millions trying to build the shelter on a toxic land, the list goes on! He is just so incompetent!!!!!
Or the disastrous mishandling of CTA
Yeap, appoint a board that don’t take CTA often.
Not in my district- ten killed so far, highest in five years. I heard gunshot ten AM , right across Starbucks. I am an immigrant who pays tax, many downtown residents do. Stop ignoring and talking down on us!! www.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/u...
People who don't live in Chicago don't get to talk about Chicago. Period. And that includes the suburbs.
Which centrists are saying this?
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/o...
Thanks. I guess I don't consider the NYT editorial board centrist so much as conservative.
What about this? This is a voice of the center-left, right? www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...
There are two pathways to money in the world of political punditry...MAGA and anti-Dem. Lots of so-called liberals, including Klein, make bank off the second path. So while not "conservative" per say, pundits like this do often share similar goals with the other lane.
the casual racism towards him in the city is palpable, everyone is out to get him, certainly not commend him.
He is not capable!! Spending one millions trying to build a shelter on a toxic land, making the deficit worst of all time, sorry, you are defending him the same way MAGA defend Trump!
honestly the fact that you felt the need to reply, twice, definitely makes me feel like the casual racism part struck too much of a nerve for you.
What?
Johnson is not capable of, and you think the criticism is just because of racism. Far right and far left have something alike- adore their leader as if they have nothing wrong!
hey man, you called me a MAGA like cultist because I basically said I think the city is giving him too hard of a time. Crime is down, the city is functioning, he hasn't sold off any of our assets for peanuts like Rahm or Daley, and of course there's a decent amount of racism in there.
Ppl were understandably pissed that he planned to pay Geo Group millions of dollars to build & maintain a refugee camp in the city. It only didn’t happen bc the EPA stepped in. But he has supported violence prevention which is working! He’s got good points and not so good ones.
Johnson has basically done nothing good OR bad. No big changes. Slim governing majority that deserts him any time he tries to do anything besides pass a (largely status quo) budget. Record hotel revenues last year, office vacancy down. The argument appears to be he's destroyed Chicago by existing.
This isn’t bad??? Holy hell you people have the memory of a goldfish
Yea the issue isn't that he's destroyed Chicago, he hasn't...he's just been inept as mayor and grandstands whenever he's called out
Wasting money trying to build a shelter on a toxic land, making our deficit worse, wants tax payer to fund the new stadium for the bear.. sorry the list goes on and he is destroying downtown without a doubt!!
I agree that we need to provide teens places to social and hang out, but when things are turning out of control , we need to have a means to disperse those crowds quickly. I hate people just dismiss the legitimate safety concerns when they have never experienced any crime!! Have you heard gunshot?
Can someone please explain to me why Brandon Johnson is so unpopular? I know his ratings are in the tank, but I have yet to see a satisfactory explanation of why.
It comes down to a couple of factors. Obvious racism is certainly a part of it. His proposed property tax hike when he promised not to raise property taxes is another big factor. He hasn’t really done much to rein in CPD, which has soured the left on him. He’s bad at making friends.
I think the bigger problem Johnson has, though, is that the city faces some serious and somewhat intractable problems around cost of living and gentrification. Because Johnson doesn’t have a clear constituency he can be seen to be serving he gets the blame for structural problems from everyone.
He got off to a terrible start and doesn't seem to have any allies.
Constant anti-Johnson drumbeat from a media and business elite that hysterically opposed him in the first place. He hasn't really done anything that could upset anyone, because he has made no real changes. He doesn't have the smoothest relationship with city council members in the anti-Johnson bloc.
Other than the obvious. If it's the obvious, then just tell me it's the obvious.
From an outside perspective, it looks like most established forces in the city (police, business, media) opposed him winning and have continued that opposition in office, hyping up any mistakes. His allies don't always defend him. He has made some errors, but nothing like Adams' scandals.
He doesn’t really have a lot of natural allies to balance the enemies, either. There were a lot of votes against Vallas and Lightfoot, but outside of CTU members and their families I didn’t see many people eager to vote for Brandon. Then he immediately proposed a $300m property tax hike.
A preview for mayor Mamdani in NYC because they'll do the same to him there
That's basically it his wins are all small, mostly bc a lot of the establishment groups (police and business) want him to fail bc he's leading but not as aggressively pro cop as Lightfoot (who *everyone* hated) then everything bad is amplified by national news. You'd think Chicago is a warzone
Adams was a Turkish agent who was paid to risk burning city blocks down, deny the Armenian genocide, and repeat their propaganda. His administration also ran multiple extortion and protection rackets that resulted in RICO charges. And he bankrupted the city giving the police insane budgets…
so he sure as fuck better become the gold standard of a failed shitty centrist politician because holy shit. And that’s before his billionaire group chat that told him to crush protests brutally or his crypto obsession or keeping rikers open.
Or his cops shooting multiple random people on the subway or his deals with trump or his bullshit narratives attacking immigrants or his attempting to destroy the library system.
Exactly. The old establishment has an attitude of (and you can see it in the Trib/Crain's every day) we opposed you and you affronted us by winning decisively and yet somehow you haven't come crawling back to do whatever we want, how vile (and confusing).
Its really a Daley machine cargo cult. Entire Vallas campaign consisted of old Daley hacks doing exactly what they did in the 90s, shouting down anyone who said they update priors, trying to summon back the old magic and a resoration, which they KNOW is coming, because they are the natural order.
And importantly, all mayors since Daley have had to live with his disastrous budget decisions, they're still very much being paid for.
He hasn’t done much bad, but he hasn’t done much good either after talking a big game. He didn’t do a great job of creating any new allies in the city, so seeing Mamdani create allies as part of his campaign had been a great sign in that regard.
The biggest thing I think is that he's been less effective, partly because he doesn't have as established a power base as previous mayors so the alderpeople feel more inclined to resist him Some of it is also his inexperience being mayor, which. He's been better than the last two at least
Crime rates rarely seem to be affected by policy choices at all, which has to drive them nuts