Former Northwest Side Ald. John Arena (45th) has his work cut out for him if he hopes to make a dent as Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new Springfield lobbyist.
Arena has no prior relationships or track record in Springfield, and is getting a late start on the city’s formidable to-do list with just over two months to go in a spring session dominated by the state’s massive budget shortfall.
Johnson has struggled to build a strong list of accomplishments in Springfield, beyond convincing Illinois Senate President Don Harmon not to call for a vote a bill that would have extended a moratorium on public school closings and shielded Chicago’s selective enrollment, magnet and charter schools from major changes.
The mayor also has a tense relationship with Gov. J.B. Pritzker. After a recent clash between Pritzker and Johnson over the governor’s stalled hemp regulations initiative, Pritzker complained that the mayor and his team “don’t have good relationships in Springfield, in part, because they don’t do the outreach that’s necessary.”
Some of Arena’s former City Council colleagues are upset with Johnson’s decision to hire the former Northwest Side alderperson because of political bridges Arena burned with them during his two terms as a Chicago alderperson.
Chief among them is Ald. Jim Gardiner (45th), who defeated Arena and has had a running political feud with his predecessor ever since.
In 2019, Arena was forced to resign from the $129,996-a-year job in the city’s planning department that former Mayor Lori Lightfoot gave him — after using the post as a platform to fight the man who beat him.
Arena was forced out after he showed up at a community meeting about a development in the Six Corners area and distributed literature and gathered signatures for Gardiner’s opponent for 45th Ward Democratic committeeman.
At the time, Gardiner claimed that Arena distributed scripted remarks to opponents of that development, then took a front row seat at that meeting and gave Gardiner the finger.
“Here is an individual who doesn’t even have good relationships in the city of Chicago,” Gardiner said. “Why do you think he would have good relationships in Springfield?”
In a phone interview from Springfield Monday, his first day on the job, Arena said he’s not interested in rehashing “people’s perceptions of what I did” during the two terms he spent in the City Council. “We all learn and grow,” he said.
Nor would he speculate on why Johnson has accomplished little when it comes to solving budget crises at the city, CPS and the CTA, or helping the Bears build a new Chicago stadium either on the lakefront or at the Michael Reese Hospital site to keep the team from moving to Arlington Heights.
“There are successes,” Arena said. “There are things that didn’t go as planned. But all we have is the time in front of us and I’m looking forward to that time… I believe in this mayor’s mission. I believe the mayor wants to establish relationships here.”
Arena said his focus is to find ways where the city and state can help each other at a time when both are “under fire from the federal government.
“There are forces beyond us that are coming at us that we all have to look at clear-eyed — and find a way to navigate those troubled waters,” Arena said.
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) pointed to the almost constant turmoil in the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs in the nearly two years since Johnson took office. Sydney Holman, the IGA director, abruptly resigned in September 2024 after Johnson announced a reorganization that made Kennedy Bartley Holman’s new boss.
Two of Holman’s top deputies followed their boss out the door. Bartley, former executive director of United Working Families, then found herself in the eye of the storm for calling police “f—ing pigs” and talking openly about defunding and even “abolition” of police.
“The government affairs operation in Springfield has been an absolute failure,” Reilly said. “This is the time when you don’t double-down on inexperience and simply look at loyalty. You need to hire people who are seasoned, experienced professionals with a track record of success in Springfield.”
Reilly got his start in politics by spending six years on the Springfield staff of now-convicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. That experience taught him that “a big part of lobbying effectively in Springfield is building bridges, growing relationships and building trust.”
“That requires a certain temperament, and it requires you to check your own personal feelings at the door for the greater good of the client,” Reilly said. “That would be something that (Arena) would need to work on.”