Paul Vallas, who wants to add more police officers, and Brandon Johnson, who wants more spending on social services, are competing in the April 14 runoff for Chicago mayor.
. He called Vallas’s plan to restore the police force to 1990s-era staffing levels unrealistic and misleading.
Vallas, 69, is a longtime schools administrator, who ran for mayor in 2019 and finished in ninth-place. He commanded attention early in this year’s race with a relentless focus on law and order, and quickly got the support of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police. That endorsement brought natural voting blocs on the city’s mostly White Northwest and Southwest Sides, historic enclaves for police and firefighters, who are by law required to live inside city limits.
Vallas has spent most of the past two decades branding himself as a Mr. Fix-It for struggling school districts. In addition to his time running the Chicago public school system from 1995 to 2001, Vallas has worked in the Philadelphia school district when it was on the verge of a state takeover due to poor performance and in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
Vallas’s biggest financial backers are in private equity, while Johnson’s are from labor groups like the Chicago Teachers Union and the liberal labor coalition United Working Families.
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