Brandon Johnson struck an uplifting note in his inaugural speech as Chicago’s mayor in May 2023, saying a ‘better day is ahead’ for a city gripped by ‘violence and despair.’
Eighteen months later, and residents of the third-biggest US city are waiting on the Democrat to deliver, as his popularity collapses amid a series of political missteps.
Just 14 percent of Chicagoans approve of the mayor, and 70 percent view him unfavorably, according to a recent survey by San-Francisco based Change Research.
Critics say the dad-of-three has been too hostile to police while abandoning his teachers’ union pals and the cash-strapped Chicagoans who voted him into office.
Stephen Maynard Caliendo, a political science professor, says Johnson, 48, gets bad advice and makes too many ‘rookie mistakes.’
‘The honeymoon is well over. There has to be some wins coming,’ Caliendo told CBS News.
Johnson’s office did not answer our request for comment.
His supporters say it’s hard to reverse Chicago’s long-standing problems of poverty, crime, and racial tensions overnight when the city faces a $1 billion budget deficit crisis.
Against this backdrop, DailyMail.com takes a look at what’s gone wrong for Chicago’s mayor…
THE THIN BLUE LINE
Voters in Chicago, like anywhere else, want to feel safe when they walk down the street.
But Johnson fell into the progressive politician’s trap of going softer on lawbreakers than the public can stomach.
As America grappled with the police killing of George Floyd, Johnson, then Cook County Commissioner, joined others in calls to ‘defund the police.’
He backtracked on this during a mayoral election campaign that pitted him against centrist Democrat Paul Vallas, who vowed to hire more officers amid widespread public safety concerns.
Even so, his mayorship has suffered by a lack of commitment to law and order.
The number of aggravated assaults in Chicago jumped 4 percent to 14,029 between 2023 and 2024, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA).
The numbers of homicides, rapes, and robberies fell slightly, but remains alarmingly high.
In his draft budget for the hard up city, Johnson last month proposed swingeing cuts to police training and reform efforts.
Maggie Hickey, an independent monitor of the Chicago Police Department, said it ‘risks undoing’ progress in the force.
Johnson’s lack of support among street cops was plain to see this week.
He planned to attend his funeral of Officer Enrique Martinez, who was killed during a traffic stop on the South Side.
But the officer’s family and the police union raised objections. Johnson eventually backtracked, saying he was ‘honoring’ the family’s request to stay away.
When it comes to cops, crime and public safety, Johnson just can’t get it right.
THE UNION’S MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
The Chicago Teachers Union bankrolled Johnson’s mayoral campaign – pouring cash into the candidacy of one of its ex-organizers and former social studies teacher.
As mayor, Johnson was expected to repay the largesse when teachers contracts were re-negotiated in 2024.
But cash-strapped Chicago can’t afford to meet educators’ demand for a 9 percent annual pay bump.
Johnson tied himself in knots trying to keep the union happy while balancing the books.
His plan to fill a looming deficit in the schools budget with a $300m short-term, high-interest loan was rejected by the public school district’s CEO, Pedro Martinez.
When Johnson tried to get school board members to oust Martinez, they refused and resigned instead.
Last month, the mayor hastily appointed new board members, but the damage was already done.
The public spat threw a system for some 323,000 students into chaos, and Johnson had alienated many of his former backers.
WINDY CITY WELCOME
Chicago is not the only liberal US city struggling to cope with the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers across the southern border.
But Johnson has struggled especially hard to accommodate the tens of thousands of newcomers who arrived looking for work and schools and without a roof over their heads.
When his administration turned public schools into shelters and doled out apartments to foreigners, residents in the mostly-black affected neighborhoods vented their ire on social media.
In one viral clip, an African-American woman slammed the mayor’s support for asylum seekers, with shelters and $9,000 payouts, saying it was at the expense of the blacks who helped elect him.
‘I don’t understand how they can give these immigrants thousands of dollars in the state of Illinois, but look what they’re doing to our own f******g people,’ said the Chicago woman.
She described seeing ‘Latinos’ arriving in her neighborhood in a ’12-foot box truck,’ using government welfare checks to ‘buy up everything’ and effectively price black residents out.
‘The fact they are here, and our government is giving more to them than to the people who were born here, is really starting to p**s us off,’ she added.
‘Mayor Brandon, we are coming for your a**.’
Johnson was in August ranked as America’s ‘worst sanctuary mayor’ by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a watchdog.
The group said he’d lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on immigrants while his own voters languished in poverty.
DEARTH OF TAXES
Johnson has failed miserably at what 17th Century French statesmen Jean-Baptiste Colbert called the ‘art of taxation.’
For Colbert, it involved ‘so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.’
Yet the hissing after Johnson’s hikes on property and liquor taxes has been hard to ignore.
When he proposed $300 million rise in property taxes in the 2025 budget, City Council members had a rare moment of unanimity.
They voted 50-0 against the proposal. The mayor’s revised plan, a $150 million hike, is only slightly less unpopular.
Chicagoans already pay among the highest property taxes in the country.
Poor and minority groups have long said the taxes make homeownership a pipe dream.
One Chicago resident, a woman known only as Mrs Lawrence, slammed the mayor at a recent city meeting.
‘We paid for these properties for a purpose and not for you to go touchin’ it with $300 million that you want to siphon out of the citizens’ pockets,’ she said.
Seemingly not content with taxing Chicagoans into homelessness, the mayor also took aim at their Friday nights.
He seeks to raise taxes in liquor in bars and restaurants to 35 percent, the first such bump since 2008.
Hospitality groups are fighting against the plan, saying it will upend their industry.
THE TRUMP SLUMP
The writing has been on the wall for Johnson for some time. Voices calling for his recall are growing louder.
This month’s presidential election was another wake-up call about the changing face of blue US cities.
President-elect Donald Trump’s vote share rose from 15.8 percent across Cook County, which includes Chicago, in 2020, to 21.4 percent this year.
MAGA Chicagoans blasted Johnson’s tax hikes at a heated city council meeting this month in a sign of the city’s shifting political sands.
Among the most vocal critics was Tyjuan Sims, who confronted Johnson directly, accusing him of neglecting Chicagoans while helping undocumented immigrants.
‘The feds need to address you! The DOJ needs to address you! And hopefully Donald Trump will address you,’ Sims yelled in the chamber.
‘You’re gonna protect the undocumented, while you’re gonna allow for the citizens in Chicago to suffer under your, what? Three percent?’
Johnson has been on the back foot for weeks.
Reporters quizzed him about his doomed taxation plans and dismal approval ratings this week.
He said it was ‘too early’ to grade his performance, and talked up recent gains — investment flows to Chicago and a falling homicide rate.
Johnson is having a hard time, but he can perhaps take some solace in the fact that he’s not the only unpopular mayor Chicagoans have complained about.
His predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, was so unpopular that she failed to make the mayoral run-off vote in 2023.
Before her, Rahm Emanuel dropped his 2019 reelection bid amid controversies over rising crime, school closures and an infamous police shooting.