Editorial: Chicagoans send another thumbs-down message to Brandon Johnson and Chicago Teachers Union in school board vote

The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune on Nov 7, 2024

Published in Op Eds

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A national political earthquake dominated the election night news, but, closer to home, Chicago’s first-ever Board of Education election created tremors of its own.

As we write, four school board candidates endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union appear to have won seats in 10 districts. One of those ran unopposed, so CTU-backed candidates won only a third of the contested races.

The apparent victors in the remaining six districts are a combination of candidates supported with funding from school choice advocates (which CTU pilloried as “out-of-state billionaires”) and independents.

The union has attempted to spin the seats it won as some sort of repudiation of big money in politics, but few will buy that story. Money mattered, for sure, but the CTU spent as much or more as did its political enemies. And the union, having elected its own mayor in 2023, was believed to have the clear upper hand in terms of organization and boots on the ground.

What’s remarkable then is that an election in which the CTU had every advantage (unfamiliar candidates, public confusion over districts, a paucity of time to organize opposition) ended up sending six non-CTU people to the new 21-member Chicago Board of Education. Mayor Brandon Johnson will get to appoint 11 new members, giving him and his CTU friends control for another two years, until voters get to elect the full board. But, critically, there will immediately be several voices of dissent on this board, a result the CTU desperately wanted to avoid.

Clearly, voters in a majority of districts searched out which candidates the CTU endorsed and attempted to line up behind alternatives believed to have the best chance of winning. That’s a clear rebuke, and the union ought to get the message that it is badly overreaching in its push for 9% annual raises for teachers and a massive state bailout to prop up a bloated school system. Will it? We won’t hold our breath.

The other big loser is Johnson, the former CTU organizer whom the public rightly believes is in thrall to the union. For the second time this year, voters have sent him a stark message that they intensely dislike the direction in which he’s attempting to take Chicago.

The first example, of course, was the startling voter rejection in spring of his Bring Chicago Home referendum to quadruple tax rates on sales of property worth more than $1.5 million (covering essentially all commercial property sales and multifamily buildings).

Johnson didn’t appear to get the first message, preferring to blame “billionaires.” Will he register this second?

Progressive policies were unequivocally rejected, both nationally and locally, on Tuesday. Politicians (and unions doubling as political machines) will ignore these results at their political peril.

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