A couple of Chicago mayoral race
polling results from last month have been stuck in my head ever since they were
released.
The BSP Research poll taken March
15-23 for Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Diversity and
Democracy found the two mayoral runoff candidates were running neck and neck.
The poll was almost universally ignored by the city’s news media, yet it
might’ve possibly contained an important nugget which could help explain at
least part of Brandon Johnson’s win and Paul Vallas’ loss.
The poll found that 82% of
Chicagoans supported the idea of increasing the number of police on the force.
OK, no surprise there.
Immediately after answering that
question, however, 63% said they supported the idea of decreasing police
funding and investing in addressing root causes of crime. According to the
poll, 68% of Black people, 66% of Latinos and 59% of whites supported that
idea.
“If that second result is even
close to accurate, it upends everything we’re supposed to believe about this
contest,” I wrote at the time.
Vallas heavily outspent Johnson on
television ads, warning voters for weeks that Johnson wanted to “defund the
police.” According to Vallas, Chicago crime was “out of control” and Johnson
would only make things worse. Almost Vallas’ entire platform centered around
both hiring more police officers, which is something that Chicago voters of all
persuasions clearly said they wanted, and ridiculing Johnson for his past
remarks on the topic of police funding. Johnson soft-pedaled his past remarks,
but insisted that crime prevention and solving crimes should be at the top of
the priority list.
I’ve often declared that voters
“don’t do nuance,” but it’s been clear that pundits and many political
reporters are the ones who’ve been far less nuanced about crime than voters
over the past year in this state, and particularly in the Chicago metro area.
As we saw in 2022, polls showed
that suburban and Downstate voters simply did not view the crime problem as the
over-arching issue portrayed by the news media and Republican political
operatives.
Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin spent
tens of millions of Ken Griffin’s dollars to use the crime issue in a
spectacularly failed effort to capture the Republican gubernatorial nomination
and prove his questionable Republican bonafides.
The Chicago Fraternal Order of
Police aggressively attacked Sen. Rob Martwick, D-Chicago, over his support for
the SAFE-T Act in an attempt to nominate a candidate with Republican
affiliations in a Democratic primary. That also failed miserably.
And then, of course, there were
the endless TV ads from Dan Proft’s People Who Play by the Rules PAC last year
designed to depress the Democrats’ Chicago base and hurt Gov. JB Pritzker and
wound Democrats in the suburbs. Nope.
A GQR poll released the day after
Chicago’s mayoral election found similar results.
Likely Chicago voters were asked
if they preferred 1) “Doing more to get tough on crime, like having stricter
sentences for people convicted of violent crimes, maintaining strong bail laws
to keep potentially dangerous people in jail, and giving police more support
and resources”; or 2) “Fully fund things that are proven to create safe
communities and improve people’s quality of life, like good schools, a living
wage, and affordable housing, and do more to prevent crime by increasing
treatment for mental health and drug addiction and cracking down on illegal gun
sales.”
By a 58-39 margin, respondents
chose the prevention angle over the tough on crime angle.
At least in this state, the Bill
Clinton era sure appears to be over. Ginning up fears about crime and promising
to throw more money at the police just aren’t enough by themselves any longer
to win races. In that bygone time, Vallas would’ve likely easily defeated
Johnson with the message he used this spring, despite his affiliations with the
far right in the recent past (including the ultra-radical Awake Illinois and
Dan Proft). Today’s voters here want far more than just “lock ‘em up” rhetoric.
Not all of Clinton’s lessons are
now passe, however. Vallas, who will turn 70 in June, constantly surrounded
himself with older Democrats like former Secretary of State Jesse White, former
Senate President Emil Jones, former US Rep. Bobby Rush and US Sen. Dick Durbin.
But that ignored one of Clinton’s most valuable and enduring political lessons:
Don’t offer to be a bridge to the past; promise instead that you will build a
bridge to the future. Brandon Johnson did that, Vallas did not.
This article appears in The future of farming.
