Brandon Johnson’s ground game

Next to a playground on the West Side stands the home of Todd Lakin and Twania Brewster. Inside the brick townhouse, two days ahead of Chicago’s mayoral election, 40 people stand energetically around platters of wine, fruit and cheese at a celebration for candidate Brandon Johnson, a Chicago teachers union organizer and Cook County commissioner.

From a church in West Garfield Park to a townhouse in the Little Village, supporters organized more than 10 parties for Johnson during the weekend leading up to the Feb. 28 Election Day. Some party hosts, including Brewster, said they had never previously organized a political event.

“We are community-focused people,” Brewster said. “His campaign made me stop and think, ‘what do I want to show to my children?’ I believe that he is fearless about actually facing issues.”

To advertise their house party, Brewster and Lakin sent emails to parents at their daughter’s public school and hung up posters at local community colleges. The event, ultimately, welcomed everyone from a high school senior who lived down the street to the president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) – and Johnson himself.

“These are human rights, and we are transforming the discord in the city,” Johnson told the gathering. Answering Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s characterization of him as a radical, he said, “What radicals are told to do is to love people.”

No longer the ‘underdog’

Prior to Johnson’s mayoral bid, he was largely an unknown figure in city-wide politics.

Yet, by February, Johnson obtained endorsements and more than $3 million from the CTU, its state and federal allies, and United Working Families. However, many still had their doubts about Johnson's electoral chances.

“We did not really consider Brandon Johnson to be that big of an oppositional candidate until recently,” said Aby James, an intern for Lightfoot’s 2023 campaign and second-year student at Northwestern University. “He was the underdog for a long time.”

In early February, WBEZ Chicago projected that Johnson would lag behind Lightfoot, U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Paul Vallas with 11% of the vote come election day.

Flash forward to Feb. 28 and Johnson obtained 21.6% of the vote – nearly doubling WBEZ’s estimate and propelling him to a runoff election on April 4 against Vallas, who collected 33 percent. Lightfoot finished third in the nine-candidate field, with 17 percent.

“A few months ago, they said they didn’t know who I was. Well, if you didn’t know, now you know,” Johnson said at his joyous election watch party in Austin.

Now, Johnson will have to fight for the 45% of voters that picked neither him nor Vallas.

“This is a totally different race now,” said Kumar Ramanathan, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Northwestern University. “Before, you had a totally scrambled field. Tons of candidates with very little clarity.”

City, divided

Johnson and Vallas have different bases of support in the city.

Johnson led the pack in chunks of the majority-white North and majority-Black South Sides. Meanwhile, Vallas also won parts of the North Side and most of the predominantly white sections of the Central and Southwest Sides. On the West Side, which is a third Latino and half Black, Garcia and Lightfoot dominated.

“If you look at a heat map of the precincts in the city, Paul Vallas did very well in very specific places, while Johnson did well scattered throughout,” Ramanathan said. “They’re competing for those votes in a quite different way.”

Chris Jackowiak, a member of Cor Strategies, a center-right political consulting firm, said Vallas’ largest struggle will be winning over Black Chicagoans, who constitute nearly a third of the city’s eligible voters.

“Vallas ran a pretty strong ground game in the first round of the election, but it has to be understood that most of that was limited to productive areas that were already likely to support him,” Jackowiak said. “Whether or not Vallas will be able to translate his campaign into actual door knocking and outreach in other communities has yet to be seen.”

Meanwhile, Johnson will need to spur interest among voters on the West Side, where he lives with his wife and three children.

“Because he represents those communities, he has an added advantage of knowing people who are from there, who might be willing to knock on doors on his behalf and have an organic organization around,” Jackowiak said.

Crystal Gardner is the West Side regional coordinator for the Johnson campaign. She said she plans to organize more house parties in the West Side to inspire voters there to vote Johndon.

“The challenge is the huge amount of distrust in the West Side. The politicians show up around election time, make all these promises and then disappear,” Gardner said. “It is my goal to make Brandon accessible and break down the huge amount of distrust previous elections generated.

We do that through having house parties, breaking bread together.”

However, Ramanathan said, while efforts, such as house parties, could bolster individuals' trust in government and support of Johnson, more systemic, long term changes are still needed.

“Many politicians have been promised investment and yet parts of the city continue to experience concentrated poverty and disinvestment,” Ramanathan said. “Dealing with that distrust and restoring some belief in the ability of local government to solve deep-rooted problems is something that will take more than one election cycle.”

Donations

Money is also vital to the ground game. At the Lakin and Brewster home, Johnson asked attendees to contribute $250 or less to his campaign.

“I’m a teacher, right, so I don’t have a lot of rich friends,” Johnson said to party guests.

Johnson proportionally obtains more of his campaign funds from donations under $250 than Vallas. Campaign finance data from the Illinois Sunshine Project shows that 1.2 percent of Johnson’s total campaign funds come from contributions under $250, compared to Vallas’ 0.26 percent. However, by the number of donations below $250 alone, Vallas leads with 111 more than Johnson.

“Small donors are good for aesthetic purposes,” Jackowiak said. “But let’s remember something: money talks in Chicago.”

Vallas has mainly elicited large donations from business leaders while Johnson from unions. Vallas recently obtained a six-figure donation from Mary Tolan, the founder of Accretive Health, and Johnson reported $500,000 from the Illinois Federation of Teachers last week.

“Johnson will have the small-dollar donors, but it will be the big dollar donors that define the day ultimately,” Jackowiak said.

Unions

Union support also influences the ground game.

“There are two big things about union endorsements,” Jackowiak said. “Number one is these unions have a lot of money at their disposal that they dole out to the campaign. Second, unions endorsing candidates means bodies.”

Vallas is endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a union representing over 364,000 law enforcement officers nationwide. The Chicago FOP is led by John Catanzara Jr., a former patrol officer and Donald Trump supporter who has defended Jan. 6 rioters in the U.S. Capitol. Catanzara was re-elected Chicago FOP president March 3.

On the other hand, Johnson has been backed by and obtained nearly $3.2 million from CTU and its affiliates.

“I feel like a lot of chatter has been centered on the Chicago Teachers Union and not necessarily Paul Vallas’ relationship to the Fraternal Order of Police,” said Tonia Hill, a multimedia reporter for The TriiBE, a digital media platform that centers Black narratives in Chicago. “Obviously, not every person speaks to the endorsement, but it has a high degree of importance to see where certain trades stand.”

More union endorsements are also now filing in. On March 8, SEIU Local 1, a union representing more than 45,000 service workers nationwide, endorsed Johnson, marking the first major labor union to back a Chicago mayoral candidate since Feb. 28.

“I think that Brandon Johnson has really been on the side of labor, and we are ready to hit the ground running,” said Bailey Koch, the communications coordinator for SEIU Local 1.

Koch said SEIU Local 1 is already working to quickly mobilize its members to support the Johnson campaign.

“Local members and leaders are going to be knocking on doors every single weekend,” Koch said. “They are going to be in their buildings talking to their coworkers. Then, obviously, going up to the election day, phone banking, voting and making sure everyone is there.”

Next steps

On April 4, Chicago will pick its next mayor. Jackowiak said he sees this election as a litmus test for the city’s future.

“People on both sides say if so and so wins, I’m gone, the city’s done,” Jackowiak said. “The question is what will be the more effective message to Chicago. What does Chicago want?”

Rep. Lakesia Collins, D-Chicago, who endorsed Johnson, also said she sees this mayoral election as pivotal to Chicago’s future.

“What I would say about Brandon is what I would say about myself. I wasn’t a pick from the machine,” Collins said. “The question is what Chicago will do. What will be our future?”

Reported while in a college journalism class about Chicago politics