Against all predictions, Brandon Johnson was elected Mayor of Chicago!
Right up to the last minute, the polls showed Paul Vallas with a lead of 2-5 points. Vallas ran as a law-and-order candidate. He raised money from Betsy DeZvos and other billionaires, including Ken Griffen. Vallas outspent Johnson. Vallas has a long history of privatizing schools.
Johnson ran on a platform of investing in education and social services to improve people’s lives.
No one expected this upset!
This is great news for the people of Chicago!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have always considered myself a Chicagoan despite not growing up there and not living there now. And tonight I’m very proud of my fellow Chicagoans.
Same
I just saw this and was so happy! After reading all the NYT rabidly pro-Vallas stories, I was only imagining what voters in Chicago were hearing and thinking. So, so glad Chicago voters didn’t fall for the so-called liberal media’s “fair and balanced” demonizing of Brandon Johnson.
You are so right!
NYCPSP,
This is what The NY Times wrote about Vallas last night before the results of the election were in. It reinforces your view about how the Times’ subtly spins the rightwing narrative (Vallas sounds heroic):
CHICAGO — Paul Vallas took control of Chicago Public Schools when the district was among the country’s most troubled. He went to Philadelphia to head up a teetering education system that the state had taken over. And after Hurricane Katrina washed away much of the New Orleans school district, he helped rebuild it.
Mr. Vallas built a reputation as the educational emergency responder of the 1990s and 2000s, someone sought out for the most challenging jobs. When he got to a new city, he moved quickly and forcefully, clashing at times with school boards and labor groups that objected to the pace and scope of his changes.
One of two Democrats in Chicago’s mayoral runoff election on Tuesday, Mr. Vallas highlights his record of improving facilities, keeping schools open more hours and overhauling low-performing schools. He also forced out longtime educators, took a hard stance on student discipline and greatly expanded the number of charter schools.
Mr. Vallas, 69, has put his education record at the center of his campaign for mayor of Chicago, arguing that the city needs that brand of crisis management to lower crime and improve schools. Yet he faces a changed political era in which teachers’ unions have asserted their power and many Democrats have grown skeptical of the idea of school choice, which Mr. Vallas supports and was once widely embraced by his party.
Mr. Vallas is competing against Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and former teacher who embodies the progressive critique of Mr. Vallas’s education philosophy. Mr. Johnson, a paid organizer for the last 12 years with the Chicago Teachers Union, has called for sweeping new investments in neighborhood schools and social programs.
In Mr. Johnson’s telling, Mr. Vallas is an out-of-touch administrator whose policies would not help Chicago’s poorest residents. And when Mr. Vallas first ran Chicago’s schools, Mr. Johnson said, he made the city’s entrenched problems even worse.
Mr. Vallas’s embrace of school choice was a central part of the crisis playbook that he began developing when he ran Chicago’s schools in the late 1990s. Back then, though, many liberals as well as conservatives saw charter schools as a way to improve struggling school districts like Chicago. Teachers’ unions, though, have often bitterly fought the expansion of charter schools, most of which are not unionized. The unions contend the schools deprive the public school system of resources.
My takeaway- the NYT is rabidly anti-union. The paper should own its bias.
Instead of singular focus on the union as Vallas’ enemy, a legitimate free press would have told readers about his public policy platform- tax funding for Catholic schools. The NYT could have exposed privatization’s goal which is to force taxpayers to fund churches and religious organizations. The paper could have interviewed voters who knew a vote for Vallas meant elimination of the foundational principle of separation of church and state.
Nahhh. The Times was focused on Brandon’s connection to CTU, not on Vallas’ connection to DeVos and Wall Street.
Yes, the NYT’s truly reprehensible reporting on this with regards to Chicago is typical of their reporting nationally.
I think NYT reporters must be given a checklist:
Have we characterized the education reformers as wildly successful, presenting the only critics as “teachers unions who only care about the jobs of their members”? Check!
Have we left out the fact that the reforms didn’t work and parents saw first hand how the reformers bankrupted their public schools while other people got rich? Check!
Have we presented the paid leaders of “parent organizations” that are generously funded by right wing billionaires as representing the interests of public school parents (even if their kids go to private, parochial, or charter schools?) Do we fail to mention that they get paid by this right wing billionaire-funded organization and that the organization does not have many parent members and the “parent leaders” on the board are not elected by parent members? Check!
Do we completely ignore all public school parents whose kids were drummed out of charters, and public school parents whose public school budgets are decimated because of excessive money given to charters even as their public schools are obligated to take in every one of the students’ drummed out of charters because they are too expensive to teach? Check!
Have we spent 10 minutes re-writing the press release about some so-called study that “proves” that attending a charter turns all students into scholars? Have we asked our pro-charter sources to provide a parent to quote raving about a charter? Have we dutifully explained that attrition is irrelevant “because” without once explaining why such an inane lie that attrition is irrelevant “because” could possibly be true? Check, Check, Check!
Have we already decided in advance that we are far too busy and important to spend our valuable time to try to understand what the pro-public school critics of ed reformers are saying? Do we include a line in the article “teachers’ unions disagree” and claim that our articles are “fair and balanced” because buried within our article about the wild success of education reformers who are beloved by all parents is a disclaimer that “union teachers’ disagree”? Check! And then do we throw a temper tantrum when we are accused of writing pro-charter articles? CHECK!!!!
Do we believe that is it absolutely wrong to explain WHY parents, scholars, teachers, and members of the public criticize ed reformers, because we already know the reforms are wildly successful, parents love them, and the teachers’ union hates economically disadvantaged kids and right wing billionaires are the ones who know what those kids need because they care about them so much? Check!
CTU and CRT
NYC
A continuation-
Have we omitted reporting about the preference that “reformers” like Vallas and the Koch network have for Catholic schools and, secondly, their successes in enacting policy and law that forces taxpayers to fund theocracy? Check.
Have we managed to cover up the politicking of state Catholic Conferences that results in the initiation and passage of school choice legislation, especially in the central states? Check.
Are readers uniformed (or, journalists too cowered or vested in the Catholic church to report) about the source of right wing wins p.s. not the money, the voter mobilization? Check.
NYCPSP, the NYTIMES said that Brandon was elected by union money. Did it ever say that Vallas had much more money and that it came from hedge funders and DeVos?
Exactly! I could not believe the articles they were running a few days before the election! Vallas was simply upright and honorable. Brandon was co-opted by union money.
I find it very strange that NYT reporters are so positive that right wing billionaires who funded Vallas’ campaign had the best interests of economically disadvantaged children at heart that they do not believe that it is even newsworthy to inform the public. But donations from schoolteachers make a candidates’ motives suspect and the association with the “teachers’ union” must be mentioned INCESSANTLY.
The crazy thing about all those articles is that they didn’t mention policies at all!! It was really just “vague policies that ed reformers want are good, union teachers are bad and oppose them”. No explanation of why.
NYT journalists have unwittingly revealed their own values and have displayed them front and center in every story. Rich, right wing Republicans donate to candidates who care about poor children. Middle class teachers who spend their lives teaching kids are only motivated by self-interest. So that informs all NYT reporting, where the actual policies are almost never mentioned nor analyzed except to present ed reformers as successful, but selfish union teachers didn’t like them.
Also, for a lazy journalist, this is catnip — they don’t have to do any real reporting, they just call up their ed reformer sources for a quote and background information, include a disclaimer, and they are done.
Yup.
NYCPSP, as you know, I think you’d like James O’Brien. I often begin my day with a recently posted commentary by him. His observations about British politics are directly transferable to the U.S. This morning’s began with a refrain you remind us of often, correctly so.
And you may have missed this, but I think it was one of the best political rants I have ever seen. This and President Biden’s three minutes at the SOTU may be the best political things we’ll see for quite some time. This is the way to respond to people who want to change the subject to hateful, invented issues.
Thank you for the links to this source, Greg. As an Anglophile who has been alarmed by British politics for quite awhile, I wish I’d known about it sooner, but it’s never too late so I’m very glad to learn about it today! Many thanks!
ECE, if you don’t know about him already, check out Jonathan Pie on YouTube. Here’s a classic:
A bit later:
GregB,
Thank you! I remember you posting that 2nd one before and watching it. He’s really good! I just don’t understand how he stays so calm about it.
The right wing does such a good job of manufacturing outrage. Whether it is against CRT or BLM or immigrants or whatever – things that most Americans were not outraged by until the right wing and their mediasphere taught them to be.
I know they have the help of the so-called liberal media like the NYT which jumps on the outrage manufactured by the far right media and presents the people who are now outraged as typical Americans who represent all Americans and have legitimate reasons to be outraged.
James O’Brien is brilliant, but it’s such a quiet brilliance. In a better world, that would be enough. I am not sure it is now.
What we need is Jon Stewart returning to making reporters at the so-called liberal media look like the fools they are — and for it to go viral. Back in 2004, Jon called out CNN’s crossfire hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala and it hurt them. In Tucker’s case, it was temporary, since he found his calling at Fox, where dishonesty is not just welcome,but required.
Jon stepped down from doing that in 2015, before NYT Trump stenographer Maggie Haberman got financially rewarded for covering Trump in a way that Trump liked. I believe had Jon Stewart still been at the Daily Show and brilliantly used her own statements and writing to concisely show his audience her own self-congratulatory and deluded belief that she was practicing “fair and balanced” journalism to get people to realize how ridiculous she is, she would have started to check her own pandering and possibly done better. Or, more likely she would have become like Tucker Carlson and moved to Fox News where she could embrace her rabid pandering instead of looking so foolish denying it.
Unfortunately, we may need someone who understands how to get people to feel the urgency and danger of what is going on, instead of just expressing concern as if this is normal times.
NYC
Worth a read, NYT, 9-16-1996, praising Vallas, “Public and Catholic School Chiefs Join Forces.” Vallas is quoted as saying, he “foresaw a day when public and Catholic schools would share facilities, technology even teachers.” Giuliani was described as being receptive to the same camp. The article tells readers that teachers in Catholic schools made one-half the salaries of public school teachers.
Conservative religious dogma- women are not worthy of top positions in the Church and not worthy of livable wages to make them financially independent.
Everyone has had ENOUGH Already! Paul Robeson knew how to sing it.
Thanks to, you, Diane & Mercedes Schneider, Fred Klonsky & Julie Vasillatos for all of the information that the msm would just NOT publish.
(& what DID get into the Chicago Tribune {surprise!} was, thanks in large part, to Mercedes.)
&–BTW–Vallas continued to deny that he’s aware of what Awake IL stands for {he “called his attendance at the event ‘mistake.'”}), as well as denying that he did anything wrong in New Orleans, Philadelphia & Bridgeport.
Thank you and your allies for Brandon’s upset victory!
Well done Diane.
YES! Thank you, Diane!
Yes!
After this and the Wisconsin judicial election, I’m less pessimistic, but as wary as ever. These are skirmishes, albeit important ones. The big battles are yet to come. Enjoy but remain vigilant.
Greg,
I was thinking about you and hoping you feel better about the future. We will prevail!
It does not feel like this very often, but when the right side is also the winning side, well, it is nice to say “Hooray” rather than “Harrumph.”
Callooh, Callay!
Yes, it’s entirely frabjous!
Thanks to those of us who did our bits to inform those who did not know what an awful snake Vallas is, I am very grateful now that my vote really counted this time. (Thank goodness we have so many teachers who knew.) Yahoo!!
Sorry, I meant to say “well informed teachers,” because it wasn’t the teachers I had to talk to, since most Chicago teachers are alteady very knowledgeable about Vallas and the awful antics in his history.
Yes, thank you, fellow teachers!!! xoxoxoxox!!!!
Luckily the people saw through the money mountain and defended democracy in the Chicago.
so beautiful
I’m shocked, shocked I tell ya, that no one yet has referred to the obvious joke hanging out there like a slow-pitch lob. I propose responding to the not-so-coded slur with “Yeah, how ’bout that Brandon?!”
Or just, “Let’s GoBrandon!”
When I went to the anti- and pro-Trump rally near the Courthouse, a guy was carrying a huge Let’s Go, Brandon banner. I should have asked him if he was from Chicago.
Here’s what I was thinking:
Him: “Let’s go, Brandon!”
You: “Yeah! How ’bout that Brandon!” Praises both Biden and Johnson and they have no idea they’ve been dissed because they’re too stupid!
Diane, It’s truly wonderful that you went to the courthouse yesterday, because reports indicated that many more protesters against Trump (and media) than MAGATS were there then. I think this says a lot since it’s New Yorkers who know him best, and being reminded of how he is detested by so many of them must really get to him –& might help to explain what I thought was his angry face in court. Thanks so much for going!!!
Thank you. It was my civic duty.
You’re just another one of those loony lefties who needs a job! 🤣 I too want to thank you. It’s important for people to bear witness to these events.
Hmm. I’m not as optimistic as you. But what do I know. What I think doesn’t matter. I wish the best for Detroit, I mean Chicago!
It was a choice between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas. Vallas would have put big corps first. Johnson won’t.