With almost 90% of precincts reporting, Brandon Johnson was just leading with 50.38% of the vote to Paul Vallas’ 49.62%. At Johnson’s campaign event, cheers and applause erupted when he pulled ahead.
When the polls closed at 7 p.m., the Vallas campaign party official began. Ald. Walter Burnett was among guests at the Regency Ballroom at the Hyatt on Wacker Drive, where supporters waited in a long line to show tickets for entry. Supporters watched a TV monitor as results came in.
Burnett said he’d work with Johnson should he win, but said Johnson has a lot to learn. Burnett described Vallas as a “numbers guy” who knows “how to make things happen.”“All day people have been very concerned in terms of how it's all going to end up. … It's going to be tight,” Perez said. La Kisha Latham, treasurer for the Conrad Worrill Community Reparations Commission, screamed in excitement when Johnson took the lead, noting that he committed to the group’s reparations plan this past Sunday.
The result of the contest between Vallas, the former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, and Johnson, a Cook County commissioner, is likely to serve as a referendum on public safety, with the rivals offering wildly different solutions to the seemingly intractable problem. On Election Day, Johnson carried on his shoulders the hopes of the progressive movement that formed in opposition to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decisions to close half of the city’s publicly run mental health clinics, as well as 50 schools across the city.An organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson helped lead the effort to create new political organizations determined to serve as a counterweight to not just Emanuel and his policies but also Chicago’s business community.
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