<p><a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/brandon-johnson" >Mayor Brandon Johnson</a> seems to know that he has dug himself into a political hole, in part, by failing to communicate.</p><p>That’s not easy for the fast-talking preacher’s son to admit. But it’s a reality Johnson is confronting and changing as he approaches next week’s midterm anniversary.</p><p>“If you don’t get out in front and make sure that your message is clear, your opposition certainly will. And that’s exactly what happened,” Johnson said in an extended interview with the Sun-Times and WBEZ.</p><p>“I took it for granted that people would just find out that I was doing good work… I’ve learned my lesson that, as hard as the work is to actually get it done and the effort that I put in doing it, I have to expend that amount of effort to communicate to people why and what,” he said.</p><p>That’s not the only change that Chicago’s embattled mayor has made recently. He’s changing physically.</p><p>The mayor appears to have dropped at least a couple of suit sizes with an “old fashioned” weight loss routine that includes both diet and exercise. His metamorphosis may relate to the massive heart attack that killed Chicago’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, just months into his second term.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center><div class="Enhancement-item">
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</div></div><p>“When I first got elected, the number of individuals who were around during Mayor Harold Washington’s time talked about just taking care of yourself, eating right, and exercising,” Johnson said.</p><p>“So I’ve been doing that … The old-fashioned way … just eating right and exercising and spending more time in prayer and just being a little bit more disciplined,” he said. “It allows me to be healthy and strong as I deal with all of these looming challenges.”</p><p>The challenges are huge, both fiscally and politically.</p><p>Johnson’s public approval rating has fallen so far and fast that the mid-term anniversary appears, to some, more like the beginning of the end.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Mayor Brandon Johnson presides over a City Council meeting Wednesday, where his green social housing initiative stalled." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/d50499d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7092×3980+0+0/resize/490×275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F57%2F3f%2Fdba83b504b1e9ce3541ab3c13073%2Fcouncil-041725-21.JPG 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/463c718/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7092×3980+0+0/resize/980×550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F57%2F3f%2Fdba83b504b1e9ce3541ab3c13073%2Fcouncil-041725-21.JPG 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Mayor Brandon Johnson presides over a recent City Council meeting.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>The school board debacle. Johnson’s failure to clean house immediately and the personnel missteps that followed. His apparent falling out with a progressive union that was a bedrock of his support. Continued tensions with Gov. JB Pritzker, and his anemic record in Springfield. An ongoing contract dispute with Chicago firefighters. The protracted budget stalemate and a broken promise to hold the line on property taxes. Tensions with an emboldened City Council.</p><p>All of it and more begs the question: Is Johnson a one-term mayor with competency questions that are irreversible with Chicago voters? Or does he have a pathway out and, if he does, what is his uphill road to reelection?</p><p>“It’s never too late,” Johnson said.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
<div class="RelatedList-title">Related</div>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/brandonjohnson/2024/05/09/mayor-brandon-johnson-first-year-in-office-migrants-schools-bears-stadium-crime-police" >The ups and downs of Mayor Johnson’s roller-coaster first year</a>
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<p>Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), the city council dean who doubles as Johnson’s handpicked Zoning Committee chair, said the communication stumbles have left Johnson with a narrow road to resurrection.</p><p>“He has to get a publicity team together. He has to really show people what he’s doing. A lot of people can’t see it… He has to figure out a way of getting his wins out there,” Burnett said.</p><p>“It’s not going to be easy, but I’m never going to say it’s impossible,” he said.</p><h3>The wins along the way</h3><p>Johnson’s missteps have been peppered with notable wins.</p><p>Some of his biggest progressive victories came in the first few months, including paid leave and the end of the subminimum wage for tipped workers.</p><p>More recently, there was <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2025/05/07/city-council-approval-brandon-johnson-green-social-housing-plan" >“Green Social Housing” </a>— a new, nonprofit arm of the city to build environmentally-sound affordable housing — and the $1.25 billion housing and economic development bond to help fund it. The execution of Lori Lightfoot’s <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2025/04/14/la-salle-street-revamp-tif-district-office-to-residential-conversion-brandon-johnson-lori-lightfoot" >“La Salle Street Reimagined”</a> to convert empty office buildings into residences. A steady decline in shootings and homicides. Increased summer jobs for youths. Reopened shuttered mental health clinics. Higher pay for police officers. And a new teachers contract that makes notable improvements for schools that need it most.</p><p>In spite of those successes, Johnson’s public approval rating is languishing in the single digits in some polls and in the best surveys, in the low 20% range.</p><p>“I don’t give much attention to polling,” Johnson said.</p><p>The mayor appears to be betting that his road to recovery lies in revving up the Black base that carried him to a <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2023/4/4/23670664/chicago-mayor-election-johnson-defeats-vallas" >general election victory over Paul Vallas</a> in 2023. He won 29 of 50 wards, including a clean sweep of all majority Black wards.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Brandon Johnson, left, and Paul Vallas debate one another at WBBM-TV CBS Channel 2’s studio, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. " srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bb98db3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000×1684+0+158/resize/490×275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F95%2F34%2F14a50520412d86d20cfb4b28249d%2Fdebate-032923-9.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/4fdaa0c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000×1684+0+158/resize/980×550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F95%2F34%2F14a50520412d86d20cfb4b28249d%2Fdebate-032923-9.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Brandon Johnson, left, and Paul Vallas debate one another during the Chicago mayoral campaign in 2023. </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>He has been making the rounds at Black churches and became an almost weekly guest on Black radio stations, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2025/03/20/mayor-brandon-johnson-black-voters-harold-washington-wvon-interview-migrant-crisis-sanctuary" >including WVON.</a></p><p>It was during an appearance at a Black church that Johnson said his biggest mistake was in not cleaning house fast enough and that, “If you ain’t with us, you just gotta go.” Shortly after making that statement, sweeping leadership changes came to the CTA, the Chicago Park District, the Department of Aviation, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, and the agency that runs the city’s 911 center.</p><p>Veteran political strategist Delmarie Cobb said Johnson has a lot of ground to make up if he hopes to win back Black voters who seem to have forgotten “the harm that the other mayors did to us.”</p><p>“I hear Black people parroting the same thing that everybody else is parroting… We can’t sit up here and pretend that everything was okay under these other people when it wasn’t, and now this is the worst mayor we’ve ever had? Are you kidding me?” Cobb said.</p><h3> Schools and staffing stumbles</h3><p>Some of Johnson’s biggest headaches, missteps — and now regrets — have occurred at the Chicago Public Schools.</p><p>He retained Lightfoot’s school CEO Pedro Martinez only to <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2024/12/20/cps-board-eyeing-exit-plan-for-ceo-martinez-that-would-allow-him-to-remain-in-job-6-months-sources-say" >belatedly pull the plug</a> after Martinez resisted pressure to take out a short-term, high interest loan to bankroll a new teachers contract and reimburse the city for a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching school employees.</p><p>“I should have known that his value system was not aligned with where we were going,” Johnson said of Martinez. “That this individual just was not capable of carrying out” Johnson’s vision for the school system he was once a part of.</p><p>“That’s one decision that I’ve had to live with… And I won’t do it again.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="CPS CEO Pedro Martinez Mayor Brandon Johnson" srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3915420/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6122×3436+0+324/resize/490×275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fec%2Fb8%2Fd3acec22322b69a8d619a2f19792%2Fmerlin-113893370.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/51a4def/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6122×3436+0+324/resize/980×550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fec%2Fb8%2Fd3acec22322b69a8d619a2f19792%2Fmerlin-113893370.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez (left), and Mayor Brandon Johnson</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file photo</p></div></div>
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</div><p>The personnel missteps have also included sticking with his longtime friend and <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2024/10/23/johnson-communications-director-leaving-mayors-office-ronnie-reese" >communications director Ronnie Reese,</a> amid a litany of complaints against Reese and dumping a popular cultural affairs commissioner in favor of a political ally who has overseen a mass exodus of top staff and alienated segments of the arts community.</p><p>To say the divorce with Martinez has been a messy one would be an understatement. Martinez sued the board and, after being fired without cause, has stayed on through the end of this school year.</p><p>In between, the mayor’s appointed board resigned en masse, unwilling to be put in the middle of the loan and Martinez controversies. That was followed by the abrupt resignation of Johnson’s second appointed board president, the Rev. Mitchell Johnson, who made antisemitic and misogynistic posts on social media.</p><p>The Mitchell Johnson controversy exacerbated tensions with some Jewish community leaders that started with Johnson’s decision to cast the tie-breaking vote for a ceasefire resolution in the war in Gaza.</p><p>During the interview, Johnson blamed the board’s mass resignation on a pointed legal threat from Martinez to individual board members.</p><p>“Did I expect that the CEO would threaten to sue board members if they stood up for working people? No, I did not expect that,” Johnson said. “They were threatened. No one expected that.”</p><p>The ongoing drama with the school board played out during protracted negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union and CPS.</p><p>Those contract talks spawned a <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/brandonjohnson/2025/03/28/mayor-brandon-johnson-second-term-fundraiser-ctu-seiu" >rift in Johnson’s progressive labor coalition</a> that now threatens to deprive Johnson of one of the two unions whose money and manpower helped put him in office: the Service Employees International Union and all its affiliates.</p><p>Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates made a failed attempt to have CTU-represented teachers’ assistants perform work done by SEIU Local 73 members. Ultimately, the CTU backed off. The final agreement includes an increase in the number of teaching assistants as well as job protections for them.</p><p>Johnson acknowledged the damage done and the bitter feelings that remain. But he claims to have delivered “the best contracts ever” for SEIU workers at the Park District and CPS.</p><p>“I did intervene and the CTU did make an adjustment in their proposal… We were able to fix it,” Johnson said.</p><p>Davis Gates has said she has no fences to mend or apologies to make for a proposal that SEIU leaders said could diminish their future ranks. The goal was to improve outcomes for special education students, she said.</p><p>As for Johnson’s first-half struggles, Davis Gates said Johnson’s “very ambitious” legislative agenda looks “remarkably different from those of previous mayors” and that it will take time for Chicagoans to adjust to that “cultural transformation.”</p><p>“This is a Chicago that worked for the wealthy. That worked for insiders,” Davis Gates said.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates and Mayor Brandon Johnson at an elementary school in August 2023." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9272ab8/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3308×1857+0+175/resize/490×275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F6d%2Ffc%2F3c3cd437f95fde1fe15aac6f03c0%2Ffirstdayofschool-082223-22-01.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8abc0bd/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3308×1857+0+175/resize/980×550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F6d%2Ffc%2F3c3cd437f95fde1fe15aac6f03c0%2Ffirstdayofschool-082223-22-01.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates looks on as Mayor Brandon Johnson greets supporters at Brighton Park Elementary School on the Southwest Side on the first day of school for Chicago Public Schools in 2023. </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>“Working people have champions now. Working people have a movement that’s gonna respond to their needs instead of a government that closes schools on them, that makes housing unaffordable, that tears down public housing. That’s a sea change today from where we were. That’s gonna take a minute,” she said.</p><h3>Budget woes</h3><p>Johnson pitched himself to Chicago voters as the middle child in a large family who could get along with anybody. As mayor, he has declared himself the “Collaborator-in-Chief.” Even some of his closest City Council allies don’t buy it.</p><p>After keeping his campaign promise to hold the line on property taxes in his first budget, precariously balanced with one-time revenues, Johnson proposed a $300 million property tax increase for 2025.</p><p>Many Chicago homeowners felt betrayed. Their City Council representatives responded by unanimously rejecting the mayor’s proposal and refusing to approve a politically unpopular property tax increase of any size. <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/mayor-brandon-johnson-2025-budget-city-council-vote" >That forced Johnson to cobble together</a> a package of $165.5 million in other fines and fees.</p><p>In the debate that preceded the 27 to 23 vote, allies and critics alike admonished Johnson for a series of budget missteps that created a deep distrust between the mayor and a council determined to flex its muscle.</p><p>“It has been a challenge. There’s no secret there,” Johnson said of his strained relationship with the City Council. “We don’t have a rubber stamp anymore. You have allies who are independent and that are not being dictated [to] in terms of how they cast their votes.”</p><p>To smooth ruffled feathers, he said, “We are engaged more on a more regular, frequent level. We are engaging earlier… Those are the lessons that I learned.”</p><p>On the day of the final budget debate, Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th, said Johnson “better get on the right track with this trust thing because when everyone starts distrusting you, you’ve got a problem.”</p><p>In an interview with the Sun-Times in the run-up to Johnson’s two-year anniversary, Mitts said “precious little has changed since then.”</p><p>“Unless there’s something dramatic to turn things around, I would probably say he would be a one-term mayor. That’s all I hear,” she said.</p><p>Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, Johnson’s handpicked Education Committee chair, was equally pessimistic about the mayor’s chances of pulling off a political comeback.</p><p>“I don’t know how he can turn it around,” Taylor said. “Most people are disappointed because they don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know how he saves face for some of the decisions he’s made.”</p><p>Taylor said even when Johnson has made “the right decisions, how he went about it was not the right way.”</p><h3>Springfield misses and the way forward</h3><p>Cobb, the political strategist, sees the public tensions as a good and refreshing thing.</p><p>“The perception is that if there’s pushback, then the mayor is weak, or he’s indecisive because he changes his mind,” Cobb said. “We’re supposed to see this as it plays out. We’re not supposed to see the results of it after you’ve gone behind closed doors.”</p><p>“That’s what I’ve been wanting to see my entire adult life — to me that is democracy. You are not the king … Who gets 100% of the votes except dictators?”</p><p>Johnson’s all-important relationship with Springfield has been no picnic either.</p><p>There’s a deep freeze between Johnson and Pritzker. The state’s two top Democratic leaders have done battle over everything from the migrant crisis and the governor’s stalled proposal on hemp regulations to the mayor’s embrace of the Bears plan to build a new stadium along the lakefront.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Mayor Brandon Johnson (left) and Gov. J.B. Pritzker in April. Johnson’s administration had lobbied Pritzker and state lawmakers to come up with more funding for migrant care during the General Assembly’s upcoming veto session." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0ad5caf/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000×1684+0+158/resize/490×275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F08%2F7a%2F2493dad17ec91dbe45f0a73ea309%2Fmerlin-112626586.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/135063b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000×1684+0+158/resize/980×550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F08%2F7a%2F2493dad17ec91dbe45f0a73ea309%2Fmerlin-112626586.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Mayor Brandon Johnson (left) and Gov. JB Pritzker. </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>Johnson gets along with House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Chicago) and once worked for Senate President Don Harmon, but that hasn’t brought home the bacon for Chicago. The mayor is now fighting for a telephone tax the city should have gotten last year but botched.</p><p>As a result of <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2025/04/28/mayor-brandon-johnson-illinois-general-assembly-trip-wishlist" >the Springfield vacuum,</a> Johnson has delivered none of the $800 million in new taxes on businesses and wealthy Chicaogans that were a cornerstone of his mayoral campaign.</p><p>He’s now exhorting Chicagoans to join him in lobbying Springfield for progressive revenue that forces wealthy Chicagoans to pay their fair share.</p><p>“Transformation doesn’t happen with just one elected official,” Johnson said.</p><p>For months after taking office, Johnson boastfully declared his intention to serve long enough to break Richard M. Daley’s 22-year record for longevity and become Chicago’s longest serving mayor.</p><p>He’s not talking that way anymore. Nowadays, it’s more about humility, lessons learned and forging ahead with wisdom gained.</p><p>“We have to look forward. If we spend all of our time having a conversation about what I should have, what I could have done, then you would sound like a Cubs or a Sox fan… Maybe more of a Sox fan,” Johnson said through a chuckle. “This is about moving forward.”</p><p>“My hope is that we build the safest, most affordable big city in America, and we’re moving in that direction.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center><div class="Enhancement-item">
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