Mayor Brandon Johnson didn’t just play the race card at a public event Tuesday night discussing his first 100 days in office. He pretty much laid out the whole deck.
And, as a good poker player knows, once you’ve shown your hand, fewer tricks remain up your sleeve for when they might really be needed.
Before we get into what the mayor had to say, let’s start with a couple of truths that he appears not yet to have acknowledged.
Mayors are subject to criticism, just like the rest of us. When a city has a free and feisty media, such as the diverse crew that serves Chicago, that will involve criticism that City Hall does not think is fair.
That’s been true of every previous mayoral administration, and it’s also true at the White House, be the president a Democrat or a Republican. But wise political heads know, or eventually come to know, that it is better to be a happy and thick-skinned political warrior — Gov. J.B. Pritzker generally lives this mantra — and understand that criticizing that criticism, or deeming all of it illegitimate on its face, is moving into dangerous territory in a democracy. This is closer to Trumpism, or even Putinism, than what we’d like to see occurring in Chicago.
Johnson would be better served simply by answering questions. That’s how you unify a city, which he has declared to be one of his principal goals.
On Tuesday, though, he declared that questions about how fast or slow his administration was or was not moving were rooted in racial prejudice against a Black mayor, and he called on his allies to “call it out.”
“You know, there’s coverage of me being slow, right?” Johnson said Tuesday, as reported by the Tribune. “These are microaggressions.”
Mr. Mayor, mayors have been asked by reporters about how fast they were enacting their stated agenda as long as there have been mayors and reporters. If mayors enacted everything quickly, reporters would question if they were moving too rapidly. And when things appear sluggish — not that we necessarily think so — then reporters are duty-bound to ask why things are not moving more quickly.
This is their job. It is called accountability. It is a democratic check on leadership, enshrined in the U.S.. Constitution, and throughout American history, it has worked pretty darn well.
It has nothing to do with the race of the mayor, and if the leader of the city tries to get supporters to buy into this kind of divisive rhetoric this early in the game, that’s just not helpful in the long term, and it puts reporters of color in an especially difficult position. Surely, Johnson has someone on his team who could point this out.
All Johnson has to do with these honest questions is answer them.
He could recount everything he has done to date (plenty, to our minds) and suggest that the questioner has not adequately weighed the evidence. He could also point out that real reform takes time or note the virtue of patience. Reporters expect politicians to do that, and these are legitimate defenses that Johnson could, and eventually did, employ and that Chicago’s crew of fair and experienced reporters duly noted. It’s the preamble we didn’t need.
Once a politician routinely starts impugning the integrity of the questioner, then things don’t function as they should. Johnson and his administration, of course, have not been shy about impugning the previous administration, as led by a Black woman, or in pushing back against its former personnel, when they thought it was merited. They did so not because they were holding Lori Lightfoot to a different standard than previous mayors but because they have different ideas as to how to run the city. Fair enough. They won.
Then the event turned to the matter of Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, another flashpoint for this mayor. Johnson argued that questions about whether Gates had too much power in City Hall flowed from “this dynamic that a Black man executive can’t make decisions on his own.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Mayor. Surely you see that Gates is, in the eyes of many Chicagoans, a proxy for the CTU, of whom you were the hand-picked candidate. Everyone knows that the CTU was a major force in your formidable ground game on Election Day, and that’s perfectly fine, given that the union has the right to back any candidate it wants and support them to the hilt.
If you want to demonstrate that Gates is not a shadow mayor, then all you have to do is show your own independence from the agenda of a union that, however much you like, appreciate and admire, does not have interests entirely at one with the city of Chicago, which sometimes has to sit on the opposite side of the negotiating table. And your sworn responsibility is not on the CTU side.
Frankly, you could also have said: “Look, mayors need advisers, and Gates happens to be a trusted one.” Good answer. We don’t doubt her value for a moment. But when you say that it’s really all about not believing in the power of a Black executive to make decisions on his own, you demean everyone.
We’re not arguing racism has been vanquished. And we don’t doubt for a moment that Johnson has had to overcome many challenges in its wake. But this smart and now-powerful man has been duly elected as the mayor of the nation’s third-largest city, and there will be annoying and needling questions that need answers.
As one of the most significant political figures in America, Johnson has to understand that making the questioner, whomever they may be, fearful of asking these questions leads a city (or maybe one day a state) into a place none of us wants to go.
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Look at this…..
Mayor Brandon Johnson didn’t just play the race card at a public event Tuesday night discussing his first 100 days in office. He pretty much laid out the whole deck.
And, as a good poker player knows, once you’ve shown your hand, fewer tricks remain up your sleeve for when they might really be needed.
Before we get into what the mayor had to say, let’s start with a couple of truths that he appears not yet to have acknowledged.
Mayors are subject to criticism, just like the rest of us. When a city has a free and feisty media, such as the diverse crew that serves Chicago, that will involve criticism that City Hall does not think is fair.
That’s been true of every previous mayoral administration, and it’s also true at the White House, be the president a Democrat or a Republican. But wise political heads know, or eventually come to know, that it is better to be a happy and thick-skinned political warrior — Gov. J.B. Pritzker generally lives this mantra — and understand that criticizing that criticism, or deeming all of it illegitimate on its face, is moving into dangerous territory in a democracy. This is closer to Trumpism, or even Putinism, than what we’d like to see occurring in Chicago.
Johnson would be better served simply by answering questions. That’s how you unify a city, which he has declared to be one of his principal goals.
On Tuesday, though, he declared that questions about how fast or slow his administration was or was not moving were rooted in racial prejudice against a Black mayor, and he called on his allies to “call it out.”
“You know, there’s coverage of me being slow, right?” Johnson said Tuesday, as reported by the Tribune. “These are microaggressions.”
Mr. Mayor, mayors have been asked by reporters about how fast they were enacting their stated agenda as long as there have been mayors and reporters. If mayors enacted everything quickly, reporters would question if they were moving too rapidly. And when things appear sluggish — not that we necessarily think so — then reporters are duty-bound to ask why things are not moving more quickly.
This is their job. It is called accountability. It is a democratic check on leadership, enshrined in the U.S.. Constitution, and throughout American history, it has worked pretty darn well.
It has nothing to do with the race of the mayor, and if the leader of the city tries to get supporters to buy into this kind of divisive rhetoric this early in the game, that’s just not helpful in the long term, and it puts reporters of color in an especially difficult position. Surely, Johnson has someone on his team who could point this out.
All Johnson has to do with these honest questions is answer them.
He could recount everything he has done to date (plenty, to our minds) and suggest that the questioner has not adequately weighed the evidence. He could also point out that real reform takes time or note the virtue of patience. Reporters expect politicians to do that, and these are legitimate defenses that Johnson could, and eventually did, employ and that Chicago’s crew of fair and experienced reporters duly noted. It’s the preamble we didn’t need.
Once a politician routinely starts impugning the integrity of the questioner, then things don’t function as they should. Johnson and his administration, of course, have not been shy about impugning the previous administration, as led by a Black woman, or in pushing back against its former personnel, when they thought it was merited. They did so not because they were holding Lori Lightfoot to a different standard than previous mayors but because they have different ideas as to how to run the city. Fair enough. They won.
Then the event turned to the matter of Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, another flashpoint for this mayor. Johnson argued that questions about whether Gates had too much power in City Hall flowed from “this dynamic that a Black man executive can’t make decisions on his own.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Mayor. Surely you see that Gates is, in the eyes of many Chicagoans, a proxy for the CTU, of whom you were the hand-picked candidate. Everyone knows that the CTU was a major force in your formidable ground game on Election Day, and that’s perfectly fine, given that the union has the right to back any candidate it wants and support them to the hilt.
If you want to demonstrate that Gates is not a shadow mayor, then all you have to do is show your own independence from the agenda of a union that, however much you like, appreciate and admire, does not have interests entirely at one with the city of Chicago, which sometimes has to sit on the opposite side of the negotiating table. And your sworn responsibility is not on the CTU side.
Frankly, you could also have said: “Look, mayors need advisers, and Gates happens to be a trusted one.” Good answer. We don’t doubt her value for a moment. But when you say that it’s really all about not believing in the power of a Black executive to make decisions on his own, you demean everyone.
We’re not arguing racism has been vanquished. And we don’t doubt for a moment that Johnson has had to overcome many challenges in its wake. But this smart and now-powerful man has been duly elected as the mayor of the nation’s third-largest city, and there will be annoying and needling questions that need answers.
As one of the most significant political figures in America, Johnson has to understand that making the questioner, whomever they may be, fearful of asking these questions leads a city (or maybe one day a state) into a place none of us wants to go.