Mayor Brandon Johnson is in danger of losing an executive budget vote for the first time in recent memory or being forced to cast the tie-breaking vote to save it — and he has himself largely to blame.
Among the factors:
• A 14% approval rating that has emboldened his opponents and sent his own allies running for cover.
• A two-week budget delay that put alderpersons behind the eight-ball after his first budget was balanced with one-time revenues.
• An inexperienced mayor who calls himself “collaborator-in-chief” but has, too often, kept City Council in the dark while making up parliamentary rules as he goes along.
• A head-scratching string of self-inflicted staffing wounds.
All those and more have Johnson in an unprecedented political mess that could trigger Chicago’s first budget shutdown in anyone’s memory.
“It really comes down to trust. Chicago doesn’t trust the mayor today and alders are feeling that when they go back to their wards,” said Southwest Side Ald. Marty Quinn (13th).
“This is a career-defining vote. … If they intend to vote `yes’ and haven’t supplied constituents with a ‘why’ and can justify it, they will have allowed their residents to finish the sentence. You voted for a property tax increase because what?”
Side deals complicate process
The deep distrust between the mayor and Council was on display this week when Johnson tried to lock down the budget votes of two leadership team members — Police Committee Chair Chris Taliaferro (29th) and Housing Chair Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) — by adding more than $80,000 to each of their committee budgets.
Critics scouring the amended budget also discovered Johnson’s plan to use the water fund to bankroll a security team for City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, which had been stripped away by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. It looked to them like an attempt to curry favor with the treasurer’s husband, Budget Chair Jason Ervin (28th).
South Side Ald. David Moore (17th) said he voted for the budget at the committee level after the administration “committed to working with me” to prioritze a new, $30 million field house for Ogden Park.
Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Andre Vasquez (40th), blind-sided by the mayor’s side deals, helped to kill those for Taliaferro and Sigcho-Lopez.
“It feels like, every single day, the Johnson administration is doing something else to complicate the situation or frustrate the City Council,” Vasquez said.
He slammed the city for wasting “time and energy in Springfield talking about a stadium rather than figuring out money” for its budget. He also cited its failure to secure an expected $40 million in revenue from a tax on pre-paid cell phones and phone cards that needed state approval.
“There’s a laundry list of items and it continues to grow,” Vasquez said. “That makes it much harder for people who want the budget to move forward to do so in a way that instills confidence.”
Rahm got Council to make tough choices
Mayor Rahm Emanuel started with a Council that distrusted and opposed him but left as a beloved political figure. He worked to build relationships with all 50 alderpersons, using his political muscle to force the Council to deal with the looming pension crisis.
The result: Chicago’s property tax levy was more than doubled to fund police, fire and teacher pensions. Two telephone tax hikes went toward the Laborers pension fund. A phased-in 29.5% surcharge on water and sewer bills now bankrolls the Municipal Employees pension fund, the largest of the four.
“When you need an alderman to do something difficult and politically unpopular where they’ll pay a price for it, you can’t create that relationship in that moment. It has to be pre-existing. … There’s no substitute for it.,” said Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), Johnson’s Public Safety Committee Chair.
Aldermen are getting an earful from their constituents at every community meeting, Hopkins said.
“What we want to know from the mayor is [that] he’s gonna have our back. He’s gonna help us get through this politically unpopular route that he has charted for us— and clearly, he hasn’t done that. He did not shore up those relationships in advance. He did not give his key allies enough warning. ”
Council dean Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), vice-mayor and Zoning Committee chair, also serves as Johnson’s de-facto floor leader. He said Emanuel had the benefit of experience built while serving as a political operative for former President Bill Clinton, then White House chief-of-staff for former President Barack Obama and as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“ Rahm knew this stuff inside and out. He was very early with this kind of stuff. He could see the writing on the wall because he’d been doing it a hundred years,” Burnett said.
Mayor’s approach ‘evolving,’ floor leader says
Burnett argued Johnson is “evolving to be that way, too.” But the transition will take time for a former teacher-turned-paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union who has never held an executive position and spent just four years as a Cook County commissioner.
“Whether he likes it or not, he’s getting that way because he has to aggressively communicate with all of these guys,” Burnett said, referring to his Council colleagues.
“He’s not just telling his staff to talk to people. He’s talking to guys personally. Guys who like him and guys who don’t like him. He’s trying to convince them to come on board. … I think he’s gonna be a stronger mayor because of this because next year is not gonna be pretty. Next year is gonna be just as challenging. He’s got to start working on next year now.”
The mayor’s late lobbying effort is complicated by the large number of newly-elected alderpersons, including some of Johnson’s own progressive allies, Burnett said. They are “very insecure about doing something that’s going to make their constituents upset,” like raising property taxes.
Johnson’s stumbles and anemic approval ratings have also triggered a surprisingly early start to the 2027 mayoral sweepstakes. The early jockeying is affecting the budget stalemate, with Burnett counting “five or six” Council members who would “like to run for mayor” and up to ten other wannabes outside the Council.
Hopkins said there’s no question Johnson made a series of “strategic missteps,” including “starting the process late, playing year-end brinksmanship” and ignoring the festering financial crisis in his first city budget.
Johnson’s missed chance, future opportunity
“Everyone told him last year he had a moment of goodwill that he could have capitalized on. He could have forced some of the more unpopular decisions then with three more years to recover. … But he didn’t want to do that. So, here we are,” Hopkins said.
Despite all that, Johnson still could emerge from the budget stalemate relatively unscathed, Hopkins said.
“If he pulls this off and passes this budget under these conditions with this amount of political resistance and treachery going on, that’ll be an achievement. A win is a win. Even if it’s a razor-thin win,” he said.
Burnett, who’s counting heads, offered no prediction.
“It’s gonna be close. Either he’s gonna have to vote for it [to break a tie] or we’re gonna be one or two votes over,” Burnett said.
Asked if Johnson could lose the most important Council vote of the year, Burnett said: “I hope not. … That means we’ve got to find more money. We have to cut more things and raise more taxes. … Everybody in the city loses if we don’t get it.”