A national political earthquake dominated election night news, but closer to home, Chicago’s first-ever Board of Education election created its own tremors.
As of this writing, four school board candidates backed by the Chicago Teachers Union appear to have won seats in 10 districts. One of them ran unopposed, so CTU-backed candidates won only a third of the contested elections.
The apparent winners in the remaining six districts are a combination of candidates supported by funding from school choice advocates (whom the CTU has called “out-of-state billionaires”) and independents.
The union has tried to present the seats it won as some sort of repudiation of big money in politics, but few will believe the story. Money certainly mattered, but the CTU spent as much, if not more, than its political enemies. And the union, which elected its own mayor in 2023, was seen as having the clear advantage in terms of organization and presence on the ground.
What’s remarkable then is that an election in which the CTU had every advantage (unknown candidates, public confusion over constituencies, lack of time to organize opposition) ended up sending six non-CTU people to the new 21-member Chicago school board. Mayor Brandon Johnson will be able to appoint 11 new members, giving him and his CTU friends control for two more years, until voters can elect the entire board. But, crucially, there will immediately be several dissenting voices within this forum, an outcome the CTU desperately wanted to avoid.
Clearly, voters in the majority of districts looked for which candidates supported the CTU and attempted to line up behind the alternatives seen as having the best chance of winning. This is a clear criticism, and the union should understand that it is going way too far in its push for a 9% annual raise for teachers and a massive state bailout to prop up a bloated school system. . Will he do it? We won’t hold our breath.
The other big loser is Johnson, the former CTU organizer, whom the public rightly believes is in thrall to the union. For the second time this year, voters have sent him a clear message: They don’t like the direction he’s trying to lead Chicago. The first example, of course, was the surprising rejection this spring of the Bring Chicago Home referendum to quadruple tax rates on sales of properties worth more than $1.5 million (essentially covering all sales commercial properties and multi-family buildings).
Johnson did not seem to understand the first message, preferring to blame the “billionaires”. Will he register this second?
Progressive policies were unequivocally rejected, both nationally and locally, on Tuesday. Politicians (and unions which also act as political machines) will ignore these results at their political peril.
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