2023 Chicago Mayoral/Aldermanic Elections

[coloradocowboi]

So what do y'all think? Can Chuy beat Lori in 2023?

[coloradocowboi]

A runoff beyond a puppet of the corrupt/evil police union and a puppet of the corrupt/evil teachers union. RIP Chicago.

False equivalence ftw

Johnson is going to win the Black wards in the runoff, but it matters if it's 65-35 or 90-10.

This is the take. Vallas can definitely win, but he will need Black and Latino voters to do it. Right now, he's barely a stone's throw away from running an ethnic white campaign though, and that is a losing formula. He needs to take some cues from Lee Zeldin and keep the focus on public safety, not race. Not sure that he can manage that though given his many missteps, e.g. "I'm more of a Republican...," tepid denunciation of DeSantis, "take bake our city" rhetoric. He's dog-whistling and the Left is gonna have a field day with that. Not to mention, whether or not Republicans think its fair, that Republican basically means racist to a lot of big city liberals. This is gonna be a very ugly race either way.

[coloradocowboi]

https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1631757118515675142?s=46&t=bAbNaO9Vg...

If true, Davis backing Johnson behind the scenes is quite shocking.

Why is that shocking? Davis seems to be fairly lefty in general, while Vallas is very moderate if not conservative

Davis is, ironic given last year's primary challenge, a former DSA member.

What's really shocking is Jesse White making the decision to endorse Vallas. A lot of younger Black people are not gonna be happy with him, and presumably a lot of Lightfoot (whom he supported in the first round) voters too.

[coloradocowboi]

Can anyone give me an example of a time when hostility toward the police department and reduced toughness toward violent crime helped a city? We can have some police and justice reform without the outright softness towards criminals and hostility to police that Johnson and many folks on here seem to want. How does Johnson represent anything other than a doubling down on the failed crime policies of Lightfoot?

I'm going to do a whataboutism here but it should be pointed out that 3 of the top 5 states with the highest crime rates according to FBI statistics between 2011 and 2020 (which I pulled from this Wikipedia article) are Alaska, Tennessee, and Arkansas. If you expand it to the top 10, you can tack on Arizona, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, and South Dakota. Aside from Arizona, who had a Republican Governor for the entirety of that time period, all of those states are deep red. So I'll answer your question with a question--when's the last time "tough on crime" politicians ever did anything to bring down crime rates?

By the way, 8 of the bottom 10 states are blue states.

Not to mention he's misrepresenting Lightfoot's police record pretty badly.

[coloradocowboi]

Not a fan of national figures inserting themselves into local races.

I feel like if the two candidates are both on the same wave length, they should stay out, but this race is basically a Republican vs. D so I don't see why they would.

The voters can’t figure that out for themselves?

No because Paul Vallas is on the air lying about his beliefs and records with billionaire money. I don’t get why people are so confident about this guy. I’m getting Caruso vibes.

As for the “local alderman matter more than Bernie or Clyburn” argument, that’s just flat out false. Local alderman motivates nobody’s vote. They might nudge an undecided one way or another, but nobody is gonna be like my corrupt local representative who won with about 10-15% of voters in any given district is why I’m gonna decide to vote a certain way. National figures draw attention from people who are tuned out, on the other hand, and in Chicago that means young voters who had miserable turnout in the first round. This is actually exactly how Karen Bass crushed Caruso actually. If not for young, progressive renters she would’ve lost

[coloradocowboi]

Not a fan of national figures inserting themselves into local races.

I feel like if the two candidates are both on the same wave length, they should stay out, but this race is basically a Republican vs. D so I don't see why they would.

The voters can’t figure that out for themselves?

No because Paul Vallas is on the air lying about his beliefs and records with billionaire money. I don’t get why people are so confident about this guy. I’m getting Caruso vibes.

As for the “local alderman matter more than Bernie or Clyburn” argument, that’s just flat out false. Local alderman motivates nobody’s vote. They might nudge an undecided one way or another, but nobody is gonna be like my corrupt local representative who won with about 10-15% of voters in any given district is why I’m gonna decide to vote a certain way. National figures draw attention from people who are tuned out, on the other hand, and in Chicago that means young voters who had miserable turnout in the first round. This is actually exactly how Karen Bass crushed Caruso actually. If not for young, progressive renters she would’ve lost

Bernie will turn out young people who are difficult to turn out, but aldermanic endorsements definitely matter, especially in majority Black wards. Aldermen have a significant amount of influence over politics in their ward, and most are not as unpopular as you are characterizing. They also run the turnout operations in their wards.

Black alderpeople endorsing Vallas will chip away at Johnson’s margins in Black wards, which he needs to be solid if he’s got any chance of winning.

This is not a Presidential election.

My point is that: 1. Their turnout operations suck, as evidenced by how bad turnout is in these elections. 2. Do you actually think the average person in any majority Black ward in Chicago is more likely to know their alderman before they know Kwame Raoul? And of the people that do, how many were realistic voters for Johnson anyway?

The pro-business, pro-cop, anti-leftist establishment is coming out for Vallas like it did Caruso and Eric Adams, and as evidenced by the latter this can win an election in a low turnout environment. But the former is a massive warning, and maybe a little more pertinent because Paul Vallas is a white guy and has a pretty gruesome record even to center left folks.

No matter what happens, Johnson loses in a low turnout environment. The idea that Roderick Sawyer is going to move more than like a few dozen to one hundred votes, and these votes will be decisive is pretty implausible to me. Or at least definitely less plausible than Bernie Sanders motivating a few thousand Zillennials to get out to vote.

I'm not even saying Vallas won't cut into Johnson's support in the Black community. But the same people who think he has moderate Black voters locked up are the people who said Lacy Clay couldn't ever be primaried, that Black men would vote against Karen Bass because she's too far left... Sure, all Black people aren't like BLM activists, but they definitely aren't like "secret conservatives" either. Like most Americans, they vote based on various kinds of deliberation and I think a person who has said the things Vallas has said, and more importantly disadvantaged Black children in CPS to the extent he has, has a much higher hill to climb than folks here think. He can't even bank on winning white people, and nobody knows how Hispanics are gonna swing. The idea that it's like a flashing warning sign though that a bunch of bought and paid for nobodies who have at most won a few ten thousand votes in barely contested, barely noticed elections is gonna be what breaks him through though is pretty wild to me.

What will break him through, possibly, is if the Chicago media insists on fearmongering about crime and citing these endorsements as evidence that Black people want "tough on crime" policies. Of course, this messaging will be above all effective with white voters anyway who wanna vote for Vallas and not feel racist

[coloradocowboi]

https://twitter.com/Brandon4Chicago/status/1637811813487194115?s=20

This is a big deal. Presumably his wife, the city Treasurer, will do the same, since they are a political unit.

Bucks the trend of establishment Black alderpeople endorsing Vallas.

It's smart politics tbh. They can control Johnson, but getting Vallas elected is basically like letting the GOP donor base decide Chicago's policy agenda. Tbh I would not be thrilled about either of these options either, but Johnson is actually the safe choice despite his weird and probably misguided insistence that he's gonna actually defund the police lol

My point is that: 1. Their turnout operations suck, as evidenced by how bad turnout is in these elections. 2. Do you actually think the average person in any majority Black ward in Chicago is more likely to know their alderman before they know Kwame Raoul? And of the people that do, how many were realistic voters for Johnson anyway?

You're posing this like you think the answer is obvious. Why do you think people would be more aware of random state row officers than the mayor of their community? Where have you lived that this is possibly the case?

The answer is obvious to me. No matter how you measure it, Americans know national and state politicians by name recognition far more than local politicians. And, again, those who do care about their alderman's endorsement were prolly insider, high income, older voters who may not be up for grabs anyway. At this point though, it looks like the insider game is also breaking for Johnson anyway

[coloradocowboi]

WTF happened with Rush? First Bloomberg, now this.

The dude has been bought and paid for a long time now. But pretty much every old man in the CBC has drifted rightward over the years with every free dinner and lobbyist paid for trip