“Today the dream is alive,” Mayor Brandon Johnson told a crowded room of supporters at his election night party in April, invoking the words of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in his victory speech. “Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people.”
Johnson’s resounding victory was due in no small part to an expansive, multiracial coalition among Chicago’s political left. Those in its ranks included powerful labor unions, a diverse and dedicated cadre of grassroots community groups, and progressive political organizations. The race was dominated by sensationalized coverage of crime and violence, and pitted Johnson against a right-wing opponent backed by the Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge Number Seven—the city’s largest police union. Johnson’s triumph was, in many ways, a resounding rejection of the status quo.
Instead, Johnson embraced proposals that for years had been cast to the margins. He supported efforts like Treatment Not Trauma, which calls for the creation of a citywide nonpolice crisis response, and vowed to reopen community mental health clinics shuttered by former mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Now 100 days into his first term, Johnson says he wants to govern with consensus. He’s met with business leaders and community organizers alike. And he’s thrown his newfound power behind key progressive priorities that sat sidelined for years. But he’s also tapped as top advisers people with deep ties to the political machine, and has tempered his tone on an unequivocal campaign promise. Will he stay committed to the movement that put him in office? Can he shirk an entrenched system of power that has long resisted such change? Only time will tell.
“No longer a question of ‘if’ this will happen”
On the campaign trail, Johnson backed up his progressive agenda with a commitment to invest $1 billion into Chicago’s communities. To the chagrin of the business elite, much of that money would come from taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and corporations, including a monthly, $4-a-head employee fee for large companies with offices in Chicago; tax hikes on hotels, jet fuel, and high-end real estate transactions; and a new fee on securities contracts like stocks and bonds.
Johnson’s support proved key for at least a couple of those proposals, which languished for years before the City Council. The Bring Chicago Home ordinance, pushed by a coalition of community and labor groups, seeks to create a dedicated funding stream for permanent, affordable housing by creating a “mansion tax” on the sale of properties worth more than $1 million. Johnson pledged to support the ordinance during his mayoral run—it was the first item on his affordable housing plank—and doubled down in advance of a subject matter hearing in July before a City Council committee. (July’s hearing came eight months after then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her allies blocked a hearing on the proposal.)
“I want people to understand: This issue was decided in April, when the voters elected Mayor Brandon Johnson,” Alderperson Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, Johnson’s floor leader, said during the July hearing. “So this is no longer a question of ‘if’ this will happen. It’s ‘how’ it will happen.”
The mayor recently signed off on a proposal to create a three-tiered tax bracket, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Under the plan, tax on properties sold for under $1 million—more than 94% of all sales—would be cut by 20 percent. Properties sold for $1 million or more, and those sold for more than $1.5 million, would shoulder the increase. The Sun-Times reported Johnson’s allies hope to introduce the ordinance in September and receive Council approval by October. It’d then require approval from a majority of Chicago voters in March’s presidential primary election.
In an interview with the Reader, Johnson said, “Everything is lining up for us to get [Bring Chicago Home] done” this year. “You had an entire movement that did not give up on finding a real solution to deal with the housing crisis that we have in Chicago. That part gives me tremendous joy.”
Treatment Not Trauma, which seeks to create nonpolice crisis response and reopen shuttered mental health clinics, likewise received a much needed boost in June when a City Council committee held a subject matter hearing on the proposal. The ordinance’s sponsor, Alderperson Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, said she hopes the hearing laid the groundwork for parts of the package to be included in the 2024 municipal budget.
“We’re well positioned to continue to grow and move towards a more progressive city,” Johnson said.
Business—as usual
Even before his election, the business community wasted no time making its opposition to new taxes known. In the weeks following his election, the Chicago Tribune reported, Johnson held meetings with a handful of leaders from groups including the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, and Illinois Retail Merchants Association. The mayor and his team have repeatedly sought to assuage leery business owners that he is, in fact, “not anti-business.”
Perhaps as part of that strategy, Johnson selected as key advisers a pair of clout-heavy bureaucrats. Chief among them: his chief of staff, Rich Guidice. Guidice has worked under four mayors during his three-decade career in city government. He got his start in construction for the Chicago Board of Education, before ascending to a role in former mayor Richard M. Daley’s office. He left that post four years later for a leadership position at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC), where he’d spend the next two decades. At first, Guidice oversaw security for major events like the 2012 NATO Summit. Then, in 2019, Emanuel elevated Guidice to the top post at OEMC, a role he maintained throughout Lightfoot’s tenure.
During Guidice’s nearly 20 years with the department, OEMC grew into a massive panopticon of surveillance, amassing a network of more than 50,000 publicly funded cameras on street corners, in buses and trains, on public housing properties, and in schools. That’s in addition to an untold number of private security cameras shared with the city through OEMC’s Private Sector Camera Initiative. And as executive director, Guidice and Lightfoot moved to shield live police radio transmissions from the public.
John Roberson, whom Johnson named chief operating officer, is another familiar face around City Hall. Roberson, also an alum of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration, was once a rising star in Chicago politics, having served as commissioner of three city departments in addition to a stint with the Chicago Housing Authority. He left in 2005 alongside more than a dozen other Daley cabinet members who were sacked or resigned in the fallout of a series of public corruption scandals.
Roberson also worked a smattering of private-sector jobs—notably, almost three years with the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce—before joining Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinckle’s office.
Johnson’s community credentials, on the other hand, are buttressed by another pair of top advisers. Soon after taking office, Johnson named Garien Gatewood the city’s first-ever deputy mayor for community safety. Under previous mayors, the position was called deputy mayor for public safety. In this role, Gatewood will collaborate with a host of community partners to address harm. Until now, this was largely left to law enforcement, with little space for community input. Gatewood comes to the administration from a long career in criminal legal reform, most recently as director of the Illinois Justice Project.
Cristina Pacione-Zayas brings a résumé grounded in community organizing to the fifth floor. Before Johnson named her deputy chief of staff, Pacione-Zayas was a progressive stalwart in the state senate, carrying legislation on everything from rent control, to education for incarcerated people, to protections for freelance workers. She began her career shaping education policy with the Latino Policy Forum, Enlace Chicago, and the Erikson Institute.
Johnson praised his team for bringing a “wealth of experience . . . that reflects the fullness of the city of Chicago.” He added, “That’s the essence of who I am and what my administration reflects: that we are literally bringing people together.”
Shifting on ShotSpotter?
Johnson centered community safety as a core focus of his candidacy, vowing to address harm holistically by investing in things like youth employment and affordable housing. It was a welcome change for community members who for years have demanded the city focus on the root causes of crime, instead of heavy-handed policing, surveillance, and incarceration.
While he rebuked calls to shift funds away from the Chicago Police Department (CPD)—he promised not to cut “one penny” from the department—he was unequivocal about another popular demand among progressive organizers: ending the use of gunshot detection technology ShotSpotter. The call to “end the ShotSpotter contract” was enumerated in Johnson’s campaign platform.
Yet even before taking office, Johnson and his allies seemed to have softened their position, a trend that continued through his first 100 days. A month before his May 15 inauguration, Johnson questioned ShotSpotter’s efficacy and usefulness in an interview with Block Club Chicago—but wouldn’t commit to canceling the contract.
Roberson, the chief operating officer, told the Sun-Times earlier this month that despite the mayor’s unambiguous call to end the contract on the campaign trail, “there has not been any final decision” on the topic. “The mayor has indicated that he has some concerns about it,” Roberson said, adding that there will be “continued conversations” on the subject.
Johnson again punted on specifics about ShotSpotter’s prospects during an August 14 news conference to announce CPD counterterrorism chief Larry Snelling as his pick to lead the embattled department.
Snelling in 2021 offered a full-throated defense of the technology to members of a City Council committee. The hearing followed a Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) report that found ShotSpotter alerts “can seldom be shown to lead to investigatory stops” of value, “rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime,” and create “additional rationale” to stop or search community members. Between January 2020–May 2021, CPD responded to more than 50,000 ShotSpotter alerts; fewer than 10 percent resulted in any evidence of a “gun-related criminal offense,” the OIG found.
At the August news conference, Johnson said he and Snelling are “committed to collaborating and listening to one another. There is a level of expertise that Chief Snelling brings to the forefront. And his expertise is value.”
Speaking with the Reader, Johnson said his goal is “constitutional, smart policing,” and he hasn’t seen evidence that the gunshot detection technology delivers on that. We pressed him: Does that mean you will cancel the contract? He was clear he has concerns about ShotSpotter’s efficacy—but stopped short of a concrete yes or no.
“I have not seen evidence that ShotSpotter builds a better, stronger, safer Chicago,” Johnson said, “so my commitment that I made on the campaign and what I’ve seen thus far are still very much aligned.”
