Chicagoans Go to the Polls in a Mayoral Race Between Very Different Democrats

The election in Chicago is the most recent race in a big, liberal American metropolis through which crime has been a major difficulty. In New York Metropolis, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former police captain, defeated progressive candidates in his occasion’s 2021 mayoral major by calling for a crackdown on crime. And in Los Angeles final yr, Karen Bass, a liberal congresswoman, was elected mayor in a race through which her extra conservative opponent, Rick Caruso, a billionaire actual property developer, ran on a law-and-order message.

Mr. Vallas, 69, made public security the main target of his marketing campaign, calling for more durable prosecutions of minor offenses and a speedy enlargement of the Chicago Police Division, which is working beneath a consent decree in federal court docket and with no everlasting superintendent. That platform helped Mr. Vallas end in first place within the first spherical of the election in February, although effectively wanting the outright majority he would have wanted to clinch the job with no runoff.

In a closely Democratic metropolis, Mr. Vallas has confronted criticism for previous feedback that he thought-about himself to be extra of a Republican than a Democrat, and for an endorsement from the native chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, whose leaders incessantly use brash rhetoric and help Republican politicians. Nonetheless, his description of Chicago as a metropolis in disaster and his pledge to get crime beneath management resonated with many citizens.

“I’m uninterested in looking my window and watching drive-by shootings,” stated Sherri Ortiz, a West Aspect resident who stated this week that she was leaning towards Mr. Vallas, who she believed was extra possible to make things better rapidly.

Mr. Johnson, 47, certified for the runoff by defeating a number of better-known candidates competing for a similar liberal voters. A former social research instructor, Mr. Johnson has spent the final dozen years as an worker of the Chicago Academics Union, a robust however polarizing political drive that contributed closely to his marketing campaign. In latest weeks, he has described a public security imaginative and prescient that goes past legislation enforcement, however has tried to distance himself from previous help for defunding the police.