Ding-dong, the witch has been ousted!
Lori Lightfoot, the soon-to-be-former mayor of Chicago and enthusiast of ill-fitting suits, made history yesterday by becoming the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election campaign (lol). Lightfoot, who campaigned on lowering crime in Chicago, finished third in the initial round of voting, in which nine candidates were trying to qualify for two spots in the April runoff. She received just 17 percent of the vote, according to the latest count.
Instead, the runoff will be between Paul Vallas, the cop-loving former head of the city’s school system, and Brandon Johnson, a progressive county commissioner who previously worked as a teacher and union organizer. Vallas finished with 34% of the vote while Johnson finished second with about 20%. One is the former CEO of the Chicago school system, backed by the police union, while the other was an actual teacher who carries the valuable endorsement of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Vallas (who might not actually reside in Chicago) is a huge fan of police, so committed to the cause that he raised a little piglet of his own. His son Gus was one of three police officers who fatally shot a man in Texas just last year over a parole violation. To hear Paul talk about it, his son was justified in executing a man fleeing from police. He has called for adding hundreds of police officers to patrol the city; mind you Chicago already has one of the highest police to civilian ratios in the country. If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s more cops.
Johnson on the other hand has been something of a surprise success story these past few months. He received about $1 million from the Chicago Teachers Union for his campaign and had support from several other prominent progressive organizations, including United Working Families. The former teacher and union organizer argued that the answer to addressing crime is not more money for police but more investment in mental health care, education, jobs and affordable housing, which is uhh…correct. He’s already making too much sense to be a politician. It’ll be an interesting month of campaigning leading up to the runoff election.
Side Items
Greek Train Tragedy: A passenger train and a freight train crashed head-on in central Greece last night, killing at least 36 people and injuring dozens more. Many of the hundreds of people aboard the passenger train were students returning from Greece’s Carnival festival. This year was the first time the three-day festival, which precedes Lent, was celebrated since the start of the pandemic
Another Piglet Puff Piece: Interesting piece in New York Times magazine this week, focusing on Louisville’s new “Accountability and Improvement Bureau”, whose primary goal is to rehabilitate the city’s corrupt and murderous police department. The man in charge of the bureau, Paul Humphrey, has the audacity to say, “I signed up to be a hero.” My brother in Islam, nobody needs you to be a hero. Go somewhere and eat a donut or something
New York Paying Protesters: Speaking of police accountability, the city of New York has agreed to pay millions of dollars to demonstrators who were violently penned in by police during protests for racial justice in 2020. The violent police tactic known as “kettling”, also used on farm animals, resulted in officers beating protesters with batons and showering them in pepper spray. Having personally undergone a similar experience in Minnesota in 2021, I’m still waiting on my check