Recently-elected Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has made a couple of moves this week all but guaranteed to make him a one-term mayor. First, despite "no property tax increases" being the cornerstone of his campaign, he proposed a budget today that—wait for it—would increase property taxes:
“I’m not going to raise property taxes. I’m the only person running in this race who made a commitment to that,” he said during a Block Club interview in March 2023. “For my first term, we’re not raising property taxes.”
But facing a series of tough decisions over how to close a nearly $1 billion spending gap in 2025, now-Mayor Brandon Johnson is going back on that promise.
In his budget address Wednesday, Johnson will propose increasing the city’s property tax levy to bring in an additional $300 million per year, according to the mayor’s office.
The proposal would increase most people's taxes by 4% a year. But that may not have been his worst sin this week, compared with his appointment of The Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson (no relation) to head the Chicago Public Schools Board. The Rev. Johnson, it turns out, has quite the social media history:
A majority of the City Council is calling for the newly appointed president of the Chicago Board of Education to resign in the aftermath of “antisemitic and pro-Hamas” comments, calling his appointment a vetting failure by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
The Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson made comments containing tropes of antisemitism following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year, Jewish Insider reports. The publication cited screenshots from various accounts linked to Mitchell Johnson, which included posts comparing “Zionist Jews” to Nazi Germany.
“My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment. It will not be nice and I care not how and what you call me,” he wrote in December.
The council is urging Mitchell Johnson to apologize and resign immediately, according to a joint statement signed by 26 council members. They singled out Brandon Johnson's vetting process when appointing new board members.
“Calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack an ‘absolute right’ and justifying it as resistance against oppression, as Rev. Johnson did in March of this year and on other occasions, is abhorrent, inexcusable and disqualifying from public service,” the statement said. “His continued role on the school board is non-negotiable, both he and Mayor Johnson must act now to correct this terrible mistake.”
Mayor Johnson's first choice for the post, the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, was apparently unavailable.
"Vetting failure" my ass. Johnson has gone out of his way to piss off the moderates who decided to give him a chance over the right-of-center Paul Vallas, and boy has he succeeded. But we're stuck with him until 2027.