Brandon Johnson defeated Paul Vallas on Tuesday to become the next mayor of Chicago, defying a view that tough-on-crime action is needed to shift the city’s crime problem. Our story on POLITICO’s home page With nearly all precincts reporting — but some 90,000 ballots left to count — Johnson led Vallas, 51 percent to 49 percent. Results here. And here’s how precincts voted, via WBEZ. “Tonight, Chicago chose hope over fear,” Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and progressive union organizer, told supporters in his victory speech at the Marriott Marquis. “I ain’t never seen a city silence a dog whistle.” A few minutes earlier at the Hyatt on Wacker Drive, Vallas told a stunned crowd that even with mail-in-ballots still up for grabs, he had called Johnson to say, “I absolutely expect him to be the next mayor of Chicago.” There were some gasps and "boos," which Vallas asked to stop. Vallas added he would support Johnson. “It’s clear based on the results tonight that the city is deeply divided,” said Vallas, a veteran politician who emerged as the top vote-getter in the first round in part because he was the only white person among nine candidates. Johnson's tone was similarly conciliatory. To those who didn’t vote for him, the union organizer and former schoolteacher said, “I care about you. I value you. And I want to hear from you. I want to work with you. I will be the mayor for you, too.” Johnson was a longshot in many ways when he entered the mayor’s race. He had little name recognition, lacked Vallas’ budgeting experience and was caught on tape defending the “defund the police” movement. The latter is what differentiated him most from Vallas, who ran on a “tough on crime” campaign. What Johnson did have was the Chicago Teachers Union, whose members were the heart of his ground game. Nationally: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called Johnson’s election “a transformational moment.” Mayoral messages: Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost her bid for reelection in the first round of the race, congratulated Johnson on a “hard-fought runoff victory,” adding: “It is time for all of us as Chicagoans, regardless of our zip code or neighborhood, our race or ethnicity, the creator we worship, or who we love, to come together and recommit ourselves to uniting around our shared present and future.” Lightfoot also said she would “collaborate throughout the transition period.” Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, now the U.S. ambassador to Japan, gave a hat tip on Twitter: “Congratulations to Brandon Johnson on being elected the 57th mayor of Chicago. It's a job of a lifetime, Brandon. Your success is the Second City’s success — and I am rooting for your success.” The headlines … Where Johnson did well: ‘We outperformed on the lakefront. The turnout was good. We outperformed on the South Side in terms of the margin. It could be the case that some of the voters on the South Side who felt like they couldn’t vote for us didn’t vote at all,” Jason Lee, a senior adviser to the Johnson campaign, told the Sun-Times in a piece by Fran Spielman, Tina Sfondeles and Nader Issa. The youth vote was up from February, which likely helped Johnson, according to the Chicago Board of Elections. Johnson also won 80 percent of the Black vote, according to political consultant Frank Calabrese, who mapped Johnson’s wins. The challenges Johnson will face: crime, schools, city finances, by Tribune’s Alice Yin and Gregory Pratt More on Election Night and what Johnson’s victory means to his supporters, by By WBEZ’s Mariah Woelfel, Sarah Karp and Dan Mihalopoulos Opinion: Black political establishment may face a ‘reckoning’: “What will it mean if ward-level data show Black voters cast ballots for Johnson, while their City Council representatives backed Vallas?” writes Natalie Y. Moore in the Sun-Times.
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