Accusing Mayor Brandon Johnson of dividing Chicago and “alienating and demonizing” its business community, Chicago Housing Authority Operating Chair Matthew Brewer on Thursday became the first African American challenger to join the race for mayor of Chicago.
At a time when the mayor’s power has been diminished by a fully elected school board and oversight boards over the CTA and the Chicago Police Department, Brewer said what Chicago needs most is a mayor with the established relationships to get along with the City Council, the governor and the Illinois General Assembly.
If Johnson were truly the “collaborator-in-chief” he claims to be, Brewer said, the mayor would not have “all of the fractured relationships and power struggles” that have made him unable to “find common ground” at every level of government.
“My approach to leadership is bringing everyone together around similarity, rather than trying to alienate people along lines of difference,” Brewer, 46, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“I have lots of relationships — in government, in business, in community. I wouldn’t be walking in figuring out how to turn the lights on and looking at the phone book and figuring out who to call. It would be me reaching out to people [with whom] I’ve had relationships, in some cases for decades as a professional and as a leader in the city. That baseline level of credibility and rapport goes a long way.”
Brewer said he has had a “front row seat to the dysfunction” at Johnson’s City Hall during his monthslong power struggle with Johnson for control over the CHA.
For more than 16 months, the mayor allowed the public housing agency that serves as Chicago’s biggest owner of rental housing to limp along without permanent leadership.
During the closing months of a nationwide search that he was a party to, Johnson tried and failed to install retired City Council dean and Zoning Committee Chair Walter Burnett Jr. of the 27th Ward as CHA’s CEO — only to have the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development refuse to grant Burnett the waivers needed to resolve conflict of interest issues.
The CHA board defied the mayor by hiring Keith Pettigrew as CEO and giving him a four-year contract. Johnson accused the board of violating the Open Meetings Act and retaliated by trying to remove Brewer as board chair and interim operating chair. But Brewer stayed put.
Brewer said his decision to join the crowded field of candidates seeking to deny Johnson a second term is not about getting even or settling a political score with the mayor. It’s about what he called the “failures over the last three years to move the city forward.”
“I witnessed first-hand real residents whose lives are impacted by this limbo that’s largely the result of putting politics over people. We have a city full of agencies that are devoid of leaderships,” Brewer said.
With oversight boards in every direction, Brewer said, “The power now isn’t the seat itself as much as it is the leadership and the style and the ability to unify around a shared vision. … That’s gonna be the job of the next mayor, which is why this moment matters.”
Without the big bucks to compete with the $18.3 million-and-counting war chest of Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, a likely mayoral challenger, Brewer is counting on his compelling personal story to captivate voters.
A father who battled drug addiction. A mother who took her two young children away from that situation and raised Matthew and his brother in poverty on her own. Brewer went on to become the first student of color to serve as student body president at Stanford, then earned an MBA at Harvard and a law degree at Yale simultaneously.
He started a nonprofit to mentor young leaders. He is a partner at a prominent Chicago law firm and co-owner of the Wieners Circle, the Lincoln Park hot dog stand known for using profanity to berate its customers. He also owns a marijuana dispensary with his mom and brother, the first wholly owned by an African American.
After a 10-year break, Brewer reconnected with his estranged father during a car trip to law school. A few months later, a Chicago police officer called to tell him that the father he had barely gotten to know had died of a drug overdose.
His father’s “heartbreaking” story is part of what drives him to run for mayor.
“He is someone who wanted to be a husband and a father to his children. We loved him. But his own issues got in the way and got the best of him,” Brewer said. “There’s a very thin line between that person and me. I was lucky enough to have interventions at the right time in my development. It changed my trajectory. … That’s part of the opportunity here.”