By John Kass

Sunday May 17, 2026

The 2027 Chicago mayoral campaign is rushing up at the city, like an angry thug scrambling out of the shadows to smash your head in and take your money and assault your wife, complete with a chorus of high pitched screamers on the street keening out their rage like a murder of female crows. If you have a smartphone you’ve seen it. And if you ignore it and hope to avoid it all, that won’t work.

Not if you live in Chicago. Not if you own property there, or have kids who still live there who you want to visit. The dying, violent city is scheduled to produce it’s own version of the hunger games. And the city is invited to bring popcorn.

So far, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias,  U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley are among those who have declared their intent to run for mayor. But several more are expected to get in. Among state elected officials, Comptroller Susana Mendoza and State Rep. Kam Buckner are mulling bids. Former mayor Rahm Emanuel is hanging off to the side like the other hyenas using his media contacts to help grab a leg bone.

The Democrats gather around Chicago like carrion birds, hopping over to rip a piece off the carcass. And why not? The Democrats have destroyed the city as they’ve destroyed other cities from NY to LA, and want their reward in meat before it’s all gone.

So why, more than two years after the last mayoral election, are Democrats trying to anger Paul Vallas and push him into the 2027 mayoral campaign? They’ve put out “ethics reports” accusing Vallas of accepting $202, 000 in “excessive contributions” from 11 concerns firms doing business with the city, in violation of city law that prohibits contributions in excess of $1,500.  This, according to the mysterious Chicago Board of Ethics, an oxymoron if there ever was one. It was fed to the liberal Chicago media and dutifully reported, but most forgot to mention that the Chicago Teacher’s Union dropped at least $5 million on Mayor Brandon Johnson.

It was all so obvious, so clumsy with the whiff of Rahm on it, or perhaps Giannoulias or both. I haven’t  thought seriously about Rahm since he tried to cover up the Chicago Police murder of black teenager Laquan McDonald.

Vallas said he will appeal the fine.

I heard him on the Chicago Contrarian podcast. He was so good there that I called Jeff Carlin to ask him on our podcast The Chicago Way.

 

Now think of those Chicago thugs I mentioned in the opening paragraph, getting their kicks by sticking sharp sticks through the fence to jab at a Pitbull. The Pitbull won’t lay on it’s side and whimper. The dog will climb the fence. All you can do is to call the paramedics. Doesn’t Rahm remember what happened the last time he provoked that Pitbull?

And has Giannoulias forgotten  his relationships with notorious strip-club operator Perry Mandera or Chicago tough guy Michael “Jaws'” Giorango? That Pit Bull hasn’t forgotten these published accounts in the Chicago papers like this recent story:

Ex-strip club owner with ties to reputed mob figures a big campaign donor to Alexi Giannoulias

Read ’em and weep Alexi. Do you think the wise guys want a connection at City Hall? How you doin?

Paul Vallas isn’t a fighting dog. He’s the man who should have been mayor, rather than the paranoid Mayor Buffos who is killing the city.

But  like the abused Pit Bull, he won’t forget. He can’t.

So, more than two and a half years after the mayoral election, and following polls showing Vallas as a formidable candidate, the Chicago Board of Ethics picked  just 12 of more than 2,000 individual contributions to the “Vallas for Mayor” campaign to make a big deal of it in a crooked city. Cheap and smarmy politics, yes? Of course it’s cheap. Very cheap.

And little if any mention of the millions of dollars in CTU political cash that took care of Mayor Johnson’s ambitions and put him in City Hall.

When this news was breaking on Wednesday and the vaunted Chicago political reporters were running their cheap hit pieces, Paul Vallas was with me in church, at my mother’s funeral. He is my friend and I don’t want him to run for mayor again. Chicago doesn’t deserve him. I don’t want him to get hurt and they’ll desperately want to hurt him.

But you can only jab a Pit Bull for so long. Then it gets up. You can hear thugs start to cry in the shadows. By then it’s too late. They’ve roused their nightmare.

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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