Chicago’s Brandon Johnson Goes for Woke

Chicago’s Brandon Johnson has seemingly done the impossible: garnering even more negative headlines than Lori Lightfoot.

Given the extremism of Johnson’s campaign platform, which included explicit promises to cut police funding and raise taxes, Chicago residents had little reason to expect that his tenure would be much better than that of Lightfoot, who became the first Windy City mayor in more than 40 years to lose re-election last February. But Johnson has failed to meet even that low bar.

In his most recent debacle, Johnson announced on February 13 that Chicago would not be renewing its contract with ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection program that sends alerts to police and has been used throughout the city for the past seven years.

Democrat critics of the ShotSpotter system have accused it of having “racial bias” built in and have insisted that it encourages police to unfairly target black neighborhoods. Johnson accordingly made canceling the contract one of his campaign promises.

Law enforcement leaders, however, have said that the system is a vital tool to help police respond quickly to shootings. Chicago saw a 12-year high in violent crime last year, with more than 2,800 people shot.

Choosing to eliminate a system designed to combat gun violence in one of the most violent cities in America is bad enough. But after the announcement, the mayor soon realized he had another major problem on his hands – the DNC convention is set to be held in Chicago this August. While liberals are fine with putting everyday Americans in danger in the name of “combatting racial bias,” they apparently aren’t willing to take the same risk with Democrat VIPs.

Johnson’s office quickly scrambled to work out a short-term extension with ShotSpotter parent company SoundThinking to extend services through the convention. As a result, Chicago taxpayers will now be on the hook for an $8.6 million bill to keep the system in place from when the contract was originally supposed to expire on February 16 through September 22 – five percent more than it cost the city for the entirety of 2023.

Unfortunately for Chicago residents, the ShotSpotter fiasco was just the latest evidence that Johnson is both utterly committed to failed left-wing policies and simply not up to the task of being mayor of America’s third-largest city.

Johnson also drew criticism last August for snapping at a reporter who referred to widespread riots in Chicago as “mob actions.” Despite the fact that hundreds of people flooded areas of the city and looted at least one convenience store, Johnson insisted on referring to the riots as “large gatherings.”

“It’s important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way,” Johnson said, apparently unconcerned about the chaos and lawlessness gripping parts of his city.

While Johnson has not done anything to crack down on criminals, he has used city resources to file lawsuits against vehicle manufacturers over the ongoing rash of carjackings – another move that earned him mockery in the media and online.

Johnson’s lawsuit against Kia and Hyundai alleges that the companies did not include “vital anti-theft technology” in their vehicles which resulted in a “steep rise in crime,” while saying nothing about the actual criminals who are stealing the cars and often using them to commit robberies and other crimes.

As Democrat Alderman Raymond Lopez noted at the time, “We know why they’re stealing these cars. We know what they’re doing with these cars, but the fact that we refuse to call out this behavior, and we’re giving cover to the criminals, seems to just be another liberal ploy.”

Johnson has also received criticism for eliminating more than 800 police officer positions and removing resource officers from schools the week after two students were shot and killed outside a Chicago school.

The embattled mayor now faces another brewing crisis as migrants continue to pour into his city. During his campaign, Johnson declared that Chicago would “lead and live by the promise to be a sanctuary city,” but now is frantically trying to shift blame to state officials as shelters are overflowing and many migrants are now being housed in O’Hare airport.

In some cases, Johnson has appeared simply overwhelmed by the job. Last October, when a reporter asked Johnson why he had not been to the border as he had promised, Johnson responded, “We still have public safety that we have to address, we still have the unhoused that we have to address, I still have a budget that I have to address. And I’m doing all of that with a Black wife raising three Black children on the west side of the city of Chicago.”

The comment struck many as out of touch, with one social media user sarcastically responding, “Incredible! He has a wife and children AND has a job. What an amazing man.”

Unsurprisingly, Johnson is deep underwater with voters. 57 percent of Chicagoans disapprove of his job performance, while just 29 percent say they approve. A dismal 24 percent say they approve of the job he’s done to address crime, while 66 percent disapprove – including 50 percent who strongly disapprove.

Of course, any discussion about failed liberal governance in deep blue cities must begin and end with the fact that the residents of these cities keep voting for the same failed policies over and over.

In Chicago’s case, voters had the chance to elect Paul Vallas, a relatively moderate Democrat who promised to reverse many of Lightfoot’s most controversial policies. Vallas was the top vote-getter in the first round of voting last year, only to go on to lose 52 percent to 48 percent to Johnson in the runoff.

Until Chicagoans elect someone with the courage to break with woke pieties, they will continue to get more of the same. For now, Johnson will serve as yet another warning to the rest of the country about what happens when left-wing radicalism is allowed to run a major American city.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.