Sometimes, turning a corner can be a good thing.
Mayor Brandon Johnson moves into a new year with a host of old problems, unsolved and festering alongside a mountain of approaching travails.
As 2024 dawns, people are asking — how is the mayor doing?
I am a lifelong Chicagoan and rooting for him to conquer them all. Even in the best of economic times, presiding over America’s third largest city can be harrowing and horrific. The city is adrift in demographic, political and economic changes that make governing a thankless, nightmare job.
Nearly eight months in, Johnson has not established himself as a leader of a viable coalition that can govern. His progressive agenda has been stymied by a conservative impulse from critics focused on crime and public safety, as well as allies who are demanding more resources and attention for their communities.
The ongoing migrant crisis is sucking up oxygen and resources while fueling resentment and division.
[ Laura Washington: Black voters sympathize with migrants, but they have a bone to pick with Democrats ]
The city’s powers lobbied fiercely for marque showcase events this year. Be careful what you wish for. Come summer, the windiest city will also be the nation’s hottest spot.
In July, the NASCAR street race will take over Grant Park. And in August, 50,000 visitors in town for the Democratic National Convention will swarm the United Center and McCormick Place Convention Center. Since Chicago was selected to host the convention, Republican interests have been plotting to sabotage the proceedings, the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will surely continue to dispatch thousands of migrants on buses and planes to our town in the run-up to the convention. That will require that Johnson closely collaborate with Gov. J.B. Pritzker to ensure the convention is turmoil-free. A no-brainer, right? Johnson’s mantra is “collaboration.”
Pritzker is looking to the confab as his national, perhaps even presidential, calling card.
I detect precious little kinship between Johnson and Pritzker, Illinois’ most powerful politicians. Their rocky relationship serves no one’s interest, and their party’s fate goes nowhere if Chicago and Illinois are feuding.
[ David Greising: Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. J.B. Pritzker can be at odds — as long as they do their jobs ]
Meanwhile, the city’s economic fates spin around the axis of its center, but the tension between the neighborhoods and downtown has never been more freighted with angst. In the wake of a pandemic and historic civil unrest, the Loop has lost its financial footing. Office space, once at a premium, has been significantly devalued. Corporations big and small are over-officed.
Vacancy rates are rattling cages. Look at South State Street, in the heart of the Loop, host to blocks of vacant spaces.
Downtown has long carried the water as a generator of taxes for the entire city. The concomitant decline of traffic and activity in the heart of the city is a major drag on its vitality. The centripetal force of the city is being dissipated in dangerous, unnerving developments that the mayor must carefully address. While Johnson has reached out to the business community, it has been disappointed and alarmed by his progressive agenda.
Chicago has lost its aura of safety for many who once took it for granted.
We might cheer last year’s decline in homicides and shootings, but will 2024 see an upsurge in carjackings and street robberies? They are citywide phenomena, and they’re instilling fear. If you spend time in Chicago’s close-in suburbs, you will notice new restaurants popping up to draw diners who now avoid the city. Chicago’s unmatched arts and cultural scene is struggling, as more patrons are avoiding jaunts to plays and concerts.
At lunch the other day, I commiserated with two friends of the senior citizen variety, fiercely loyal urbanites who adore Chicago. One once enjoyed walking to her Lincoln Park home after a show at the Goodman Theatre, she told me. Now, she often opts for daytime matinees.
This all leaves me nervous about a mayor whose relative inexperience is being severely tested. Even some of his staunch allies are jittery.
“We should not be on the fifth floor. And I’m speaking my whole heart,” Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, declared recently on “The Ben Joravsky Show.” She was referring to the location of the mayor’s City Hall office.
“We were not ready, because we haven’t been in government long enough to know how government really runs.”
Taylor, in her second term on the City Council, is part of the council’s Democratic Socialist Caucus and the progressive coalition that helped Johnson get elected.
“It feels like we’ve got some more work to do, and we don’t know government as well as the folks that have been in charge of it,” Taylor told Joravsky.
Much more work to do. I’m not ready to pound the panic button yet, but in 2024, the clock is ticking.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
