This Could be the Ultimate Democratic Civil War
Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas are laying the groundwork for an ugly runoff campaign for Chicago Mayor. (Photos: Chicago Tribune)
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OPINION
This race could outline the fissures that exist throughout the Democratic party all around the country.
Paul Vallas represents the old guard. The governing Democrat of the Bill Clinton school of thought that wants to fix budgets, improve education, and doesn’t subscribe to pie in the sky liberal ideology.
Brandon Johnson is the modern embodiment of the progressive wish list. He may not lay it out in so many words, but it’s likely Johnson would push, or sign off on, expansive spending programs, higher taxes to pay for it, and a sustained war on business, police, and taxpayers.
If Vallas is smart, he starts hitting Johnson on his “defund the police” comments and buries the progressive as an unelectable radical before Johnson has a chance to clean up his police funding statements.
Democrats have done a far better job of painting Republicans as radical, Trump loving, women-hating nutjobs than the GOP has done of defining Democrats. And, you had better believe Johnson and progressive interests are going to paint Vallas as someone so right-wing he practically led the January 6, 2021 insurrection. (Which, of course, nothing in Vallas’ background shows he conservative, but that’s where we are in today’s politics.)
Is Chicago a city that wants to govern or is Chicago a city of a wannabe progressive utopia? We’ll find out over the next five weeks.
And whichever side wins will likely set the tone for Illinois Democrats for years to come.