The Chicago mayoral race is swiftly approaching, with four candidates emerging as top contenders to lead the city through rising crime rates, changes in education, and increasing immigration.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) is running for reelection but is facing an uphill battle as polls show her lagging behind her opponents. None of the nine candidates are likely to receive 50% of the vote, so the election is expected to go to a runoff on April 4, with the new term beginning in mid-May.
CHICAGO MAYORAL RACE: LORI LIGHTFOOT LOSING ADVANTAGE AS REELECTION NEARS
Here are the four candidates who are most likely to become the next mayor of the Windy City.
Jesus “Chuy” Garcia – Democrat
Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-IL) is in the top five candidates based on the latest poll from Victory Research. Like many of his fellow mayoral contenders, he focused a majority of his campaign on pointing out the flaws of Lightfoot during her term as mayor and blasting her for a “false, negative, smear campaign” against him.
In January, he slammed Lightfoot for her failure to prevent crime and uphold public safety, saying that she was “pointing fingers and hurling insults” instead of stopping the violence that claimed 695 lives in 2022.
“A mayor who cannot keep us safe is a mayor we cannot afford to keep,” Garcia said in a speech at the City Club of Chicago.
Garcia also said that he regretted endorsing Lightfoot in 2019. He ran for mayor in 2015 against then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, forcing him into a runoff.
He has been criticized by Lightfoot’s campaign, which says he wants to “defund the police,” a hot-button topic that has split the Democratic Party and, particularly in a crime-heavy city such as Chicago, does not carry a lot of positive weight.
Garcia, who has served in the House of Representatives since 2019, said he would redeploy officers from the city to patrol neighborhoods, as well as assign nonsworn officers to complete administrative tasks to free up officers who can fight crime — all policies that Lightfoot has said she supports.
Brandon Johnson – Democrat
Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson is rising steadily through the polls, pushing Garcia out from his third-place ranking in early February. Johnson was only 1 point behind Lightfoot in the recent Victory Research poll.
Because of his growing popularity, Johnson became the target of Lightfoot’s campaign ads, accusing him of plotting to raise taxes by $800 million, killing jobs, and driving businesses out of Chicago.
Johnson said Lightfoot’s ads against him show she is “out of ideas.”
“She’s failed to keep Chicago safe, balance the budget without raising property taxes, or make real investments in communities and the people that live in them,” Johnson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The polls are clear, Chicago voters are ready to move on from her failed leadership. These misleading attacks represent the desperate tactics of a candidate who has nothing left to offer the voters of Chicago.”
His campaign continues to lean heavily on his experience living on the West Side of Chicago, including situations of hunger, homelessness, and gun violence. His past employment in education is appealing to voters as well.
The Chicago Public Schools district is set to transition under the control of an elected school board rather than the mayor. The public school system has fallen from its pedestal as the nation’s third-largest district due to a decade of enrollment decline.
Johnson said during a debate at the end of January that both Emanuel and Lightfoot presided over a switch to an online, centralized application process that is “elitist and prejudiced” against low-income families. If elected mayor, he wants to increase funding for the school system to $1 billion to improve school conditions and programs, as well as hire new clinicians and counselors.
“No one has a greater incentive for this city to work and be safe than I do. But I’m not alone,” Johnson said. “There are families and individuals like me in every single neighborhood that want what I want. Safer neighborhoods. Excellent schools. Real investments in housing, mental health, and public transportation.”
“As mayor, I’m going to bring that perspective to the table every day and ensure that this city finally makes the critical investments necessary for it to live up to its greatest potential: a safe, world-class city that leaves no one behind,” he continued.
Lori Lightfoot – Nonpartisan
Lightfoot is facing a tough reelection to maintain her position as mayor of Chicago. Elected in 2019, she was the first black female to secure the mayorship.
In an interview on Thursday, Lightfoot said that she is confident that the election will head to a runoff but that “we can’t take anything for chance,” according to Politico.
She continued, “We’ve got to get people out to the polls.”
Lightfoot has been blasted over the last few years for her responses to the coronavirus pandemic and crime and was most recently heavily scrutinized for several campaign strategies. Videos of the mayor dancing in the streets while rallying residents to vote amid rising crime in the neighborhood drew fire, as well as an email campaign strategy that involved sending volunteer opportunities to public schools asking for students to work the campaign in exchange for extra credit.
As of Feb. 21, she is ranked second in the Victory Research poll, her numbers improving slightly from polls conducted in early February. However, Johnson is moving close enough to become a legitimate threat to knocking Lightfoot out of the runoff.
Her opponents have all blasted Lightfoot for “smear” campaigns and “combative” nature after text messages revealed her tense relationship with other Illinois leaders, such as Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and state Senate President Don Harmon (D).
Lightfoot said during the “Leaders Network” of West Side ministers last week that she would put her record against “any one of them and, frankly, all of them combined.”
“I’m unapologetic about the things that we have done to help working men and women in this city,” Lightfoot said. “And I’m unapologetic about saying to you that, if you vote for me, the foundation that we have set over these last four years through the most difficult time that our city has ever seen, we will build upon that, and the West Side will rise again.”
Paul Vallas – Nonpartisan
Paul Vallas’s odds at a victory in the mayor race are looking better than they have in previous contests. The former CEO of Chicago Public Schools currently leads the polls in voter support, a huge shift from 2019, when he lost in the mayor’s race with 5.4% of the vote.
Reports and polls indicate that the mayoral race will come down to Vallas and Lightfoot.
“I think Paul has solidified himself as the front-runner in the race with his message of law and order,” Rod McCulloch, a pollster at Victory Research, told ABC Chicago. “It appears, unless something changes, that Paul Vallas will be in the runoff with someone. I don’t know who that is. Lots of candidates are close enough to be there.”
His campaign focused on three main areas: education, crime, and budgeting. He has a history of criticizing Lightfoot’s administration on the handling of city finances and public schools.
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Vallas played on his role as a leader of both Chicago and Philadelphia school districts when advocating changes in the educational system, such as bringing back work-study programs and expanding alternative schools for older, nontraditional high school students.
The former CEO has battled with other candidates as well, sparring with Garcia over Gov. Ron DeSantis’s visit to the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization that endorsed Vallas. Despite leaning more centrist than his fellow candidates, he denounced the order’s decision to bring DeSantis to Chicago.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Garcia, Lightfoot, and Vallas for comment.
