After months of waffling, former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan decided Tuesday not to run for mayor against incumbent Lori Lightfoot, a surprise move that could be a boon to Paul Vallas or to a mayoral challenger who has yet to emerge.
“After a lot of thought, I have decided I will not be running for Mayor but will work with anyone serious about making our city safer,” Duncan was quoted as saying in a statement.
“I am exactly where I need to be, doing the work I love. I have never been part of a more courageous and committed team. The best way I can serve our city is to stay laser-focused on reducing gun violence and stay engaged at our sites on the streets and in the lives of our participants.”
Earlier this year, Duncan had told the Sun-Times he was being urged to run for mayor by business leaders concerned about Chicago’s future and at that time, he cracked the door open to answering the call.
Duncan also had told reporters in late January he was “absolutely thinking about” challenging Lightfoot in 2023.
Before serving in the Obama administration as education secretary, Duncan had been CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Upon returning to Chicago, he co-founded the anti-violence group Chicago CRED.
During a telephone interview with the Sun-Times, Duncan was asked why he had decided not to run, even after a poll he commissioned came back showing Lightfoot was eminently beatable.
“It was never about the polling — whether it was favorable or unfavorable. I just really wrestled with it and I absolutely love what I do. It breaks my heart, some days. But I had a hard time getting my head around walking away from that,” Duncan told the Sun-Times.
“I had someone telling me that I’d have to spend the next year talking about the work and not doing the work. Given how tough things are now, that felt really difficult.”
Duncan refused to say whom he would support in the mayoral election now just one year away.
He would only say he would “think about that tomorrow” and reiterate he’s willing to work with anybody “serious about making this city safer.”
Does that rule out supporting Lightfoot for re-election?
“I’m not really prepared. I just want to take one day at a time. I’ve said what I’m gonna say. I’ll just repeat what I said in the statement. I want to work with anyone who’s really serious and really committed to making the city safer. Our kids deserve better. Our families deserve better. Our neighborhoods deserve better. Our city deserves better,” Duncan said.
“This is not about any one person. You have a stake in this. I have a stake in this. Our families have a stake in this. We have to get to a better place.”
Duncan runs a non-profit for at risk-youth, Chicago CRED, which stands for Creating Real Economic Destiny. It operates in 15 of the city’s most violent neighborhoods.
Chicago CRED is working with roughly 500 young men, ages 17 to 24, disconnected from work and school and most in danger of being victims — or perpetrators — of gun violence.
The painstaking process starts with what Duncan has called “street outreach teams with tremendous credibility with different cliques.” They approach young men who are justifiably cynical because “they’ve been lied to so many times” and had so many programs give up on them. They ask these forgotten young men to “give us a chance.”
Those who agree are “surrounded by a team of adults totally focused on their long-term success” with counseling, education, job training and job placement. Some of the “life coaches” are ex-offenders themselves.
The success rate has been great. Some young men who never thought they would graduate from high school — and some who left school before they even made it to high school — are getting high school diplomas. Some are now in college.
Program participants now work in health care, manufacturing, hospitality, culinary and construction jobs. Some are at downtown law and accounting firms.
“We’re trying to create this different model. If we can keep proving what’s possible and keep proving that these men and women have to be given opportunity and have to be part of the solution. It’s counter-intuitive. It’s hard for many folks to understand. But, that’s the incredible joy of my job. I get to see that transformation every single day,” Duncan said.
Lightfoot obviously viewed Duncan as a potential political threat.
She prepared for what she thought would be Duncan’s entry into the race by branding Duncan’s approach to stopping a crime wave that left Chicago with 836 homicides in 2021 as nothing short of “insanity.”
“When you say allowing the [Chicago] Police Department to shrink — when you mean we’re gonna stop hiring personnel and we’re gonna shrink the department through attrition — that’s defunding. He may be trying to dress it up in some other name, but that’s defunding,” the mayor has said.
“I categorically reject defunding the police. And I don’t know any person who actually knows anything about policing or crime in our city who would support defunding the police. So if that’s where he’s at, I’m on the other side of it.”
On Tuesday, Duncan was asked whether he opted out because he was afraid of being branded as a “de-funder” of the police at a time when violent crime and the fear of it is poised to become the overriding issue in the 2023 mayoral campaign.
“You know that’s never been honest,” he said.
Had Duncan decided to enter the race, he would likely have had formidable financial support from a business community disenchanted with Lightfoot that has been searching for a candidate to challenge the embattled incumbent.
Duncan’s decision to take a pass could clear the field for, yet another challenger to emerge with business support. Or, it could benefit Vallas, himself a former Chicago Public Schools CEO.
Vallas finished with just 5.43% in the 2019 mayoral primary that included 14 candidates.
But he is poised to run again after serving as an unpaid adviser to the Fraternal Order of Police during negotiations that produced an eight-year contract that gives rank-and-file Chicago Police officers a 20% pay raise, more than half of it retroactive.
Vallas and Duncan would have vied for the same anti-Lightfoot, pro-police vote. With Duncan out of the running, Vallas could be the beneficiary. He has been a constant critic of the crime-fighting policies of Lightfoot and her hand-picked CPD Supt. David Brown.
Vallas could not be reached for comment.
Veteran political strategist Peter Giangreco, who advised Susana Mendoza in the crowded 2019 mayoral sweepstakes, predicted the next mayor of Chicago would be a new name that has yet to emerge.
“You’re gonna see a whole new generation kind of step up here because a lot of the old stand-bys are just not there anymore,” Giangreco said.
“Is it somebody like a Kam Buckner? Is it somebody who’s been around the block like Mike Quigley? Those are two names that are gonna get a lot of talk because they’re both people who are focused on getting things done and not so much on getting their name in the paper.”
The only politician Duncan’s exit does not benefit is Lori Lightfoot, Giangreco said.
“She’s in enough trouble with voters that that part doesn’t really change. It just means that it’s gonna take longer for people to coalesce behind a primary challenger,” he said.
“She had a golden opportunity with 76% of the vote the last time around to really bring this city together. Instead, she tore it apart. There’s one thing the police and the teachers can both agree on — that she’s the wrong mayor. There’s one thing that business and labor can agree on is she’s the wrong mayor. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a South Side alderman or a North Side alderman. Everybody agrees that she’s not the right mayor right now.”
Duncan’s decision to take a pass is not all that surprising, given the way he has waffled in recent months.
Just last week, his close friend, former Obama presidential adviser David Axelrod, told the Sun-Times that Duncan was “basically a shy person” who is a “pass-first guy” — even on the basketball court.
Even as he claimed Duncan’s “concensus-building” strengths were Lightfoot’s greatest weakness, Axelrod said he would not be surprised if his friend decided that elected office was not for him.
