CHICAGO — Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas escalated their attacks on one another as Chicago’s mayoral race entered the final week of campaigning before the April 4 election.
Monday morning, Vallas held a rally with trade unions supporting his campaign where he denounced an effort to place lawn signs around the city linking him to former President Donald Trump.
“The interesting thing is they are showing up on the South and West Side,” Vallas said, in response to a question about “Vallas for Mayor” signs with a “MAGA 2024″ logo that have sprung up largely in the city’s Black neighborhoods. “So we all know who’s putting them up. We know that. We know that. In fact, we’ve got some videos of people putting them up.”
“It’s really insulting to the voters to think that they can pull these stunts and get away with it,” Vallas added. “But that’s the arrogance.”
In the afternoon, Johnson spoke to the City Club of Chicago, where he defended his taxation and public safety plans and deflected criticism over his past support for the “defund the police” movement. He also said he had “nothing” to do with the signs that aim to tie Vallas to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
On the first topic, Johnson reiterated his argument that asking rich people to pay their “fair share” of taxes is a wholly Democratic ideal and lambasted his opponent’s handling of Chicago Public Schools pensions under his watch as “Paul Vallas budgetary wizardry.”
Vallas says Johnson is misleading voters on his tax plan.
“My opponent is raising taxes $800 million,” Vallas said. “He talks about this being ‘tax the rich.’ The income tax that he’s proposing that now he’s running from — that incidentally would generate well over half the money that he’s claiming he’s going to generate in the $800 million — is not a tax the rich tax.”
Johnson has accused Vallas of mischaracterizing his plans and denied floating a city income tax.
Vallas has often countered that he left with a budget surplus at the end of his time as CPS CEO from 1995 to 2001. But he also oversaw changes that shifted annual payments from the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund that critics say hurt the system over the long haul.
Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, also said Vallas is lying when he warns that Johnson wants to defund the police, adding that it’s a Republican “scare tactic” that was also deployed against Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden.
“I wouldn’t reduce the CPD budget one penny,” Johnson said. “But let me keep repeating this: I’m not going to defund the police. Paul Vallas has lied. He’s lied about everything else. So nobody should be surprised anymore.”
The dueling attacks reflected both campaigns’ goal to characterize the other as too extreme for Chicago. The MAGA signs linking Vallas with Trump are an effort to connect him with an unpopular Republican and weaken his argument to voters that he is a lifelong Democrat.
As Johnson sought to downplay criticism over his public safety plans at a time when Chicago residents remain concerned about high crime, he ramped up his retorts and said that the “defund” attacks against him are “racist.”
“Paul knows that you can’t fill 1,600 police officer vacancies in Chicago. Not overnight. When the entire country is trying to find and recruit officers, can we afford to wait for 1,600 vacancies when you live in Austin, where within the last four years there are more homicides in my neighborhood than the entire North Shore combined?” Johnson said. “I wake up to violence every single day. Don’t tell me that our safety comes down to a doggone hashtag. It’s racist and it’s ridiculous.”
When asked again about his previous support for reallocating police budgets during the City Club member question-and-answer portion, Johnson playfully reminded the crowd that it was his 47th birthday: “I thought that someone else was going to come in and give me a gift, and then you ask this question. That’s some bogus setup there.”
Then Johnson grew more serious and spoke about the police killing of George Floyd.
“No, no, listen. I understand the characterization of that. I actually do,” Johnson said. “We say ‘mistrust,’ but it’s far more dramatic than that. It is the number of lives that have been lost because of police brutality, police murder — that affects people differently when that’s not your experience. … And you’re talking to people about a hashtag and ‘defund’? Because we have not taken the cries of people seriously — the brother said he could not breathe — and I said that I’m not going to defund the police. Wouldn’t it just be easy to believe a Black man when he’s telling you the truth?”
Though his City Club speech mostly focused on finances and crime, Johnson also addressed educational topics Monday during a press gaggle in which he waffled over what he wants done about selective enrollment schools, which he has criticized in the past for contributing to inequality within CPS.
He began by responding to a question by saying, “Look, we cannot afford to have a stratified school district where you have to apply in order to have access to a quality school.” But he did not answer followup questions on what changes he wants to see in the application process and instead repeated that parents want fully funded neighborhood schools and an “equitable, just system.”
The campaign later issued a statement clarifying Johnson would not phase out selective enrollment schools but also lamenting how families are “having to navigate an arduous application process.”
Earlier in the day, Vallas spoke about his support for organized labor while touting the endorsement of unions like Plumbers Local 130, International Union of Elevator Constructors Local 2 and Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2. At the same time, Vallas blasted Johnson’s ties to his biggest labor backer, CTU.
“The more they can divert attention from Johnson’s candidacy, the fact that he’s still bought and paid for by the Chicago Teachers Union, the fact that when he retires he will have a teacher pension despite the fact he’s only worked four years as a teacher,” Vallas said. “The more they can make that, or try to make it about me, the less he has to say about his plans to defund the cops. The less he has to say about how he would stand up to the teachers union.”
Organized labor has been divided between Vallas and Johnson. Trade groups, like plumbers and electricians, have supported Vallas, while Johnson has received an endorsement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, which represents thousands of city workers, the CTU and Service Employees International Union Locals 1 and 73.
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