Brandon Johnson is Chicago’s First Non-Weirdo Mayor

Chicago Mayors are often Weirdos — have you noticed this?

First, a definition: a Weirdo is different from your run-of-the-mill lowercase weirdo, which we also have many of in Chicago.

An uppercase capital letter Weirdo is someone who can afford to be slightly removed from reality: their eccentricity is not a threat to their place in the social order.

I won’t pretend to be well-versed in the lore of Mayors of Chicago going all the way back to 1800s, but here are some recent types of Chicago Mayors: Men’s Warehouse enthusiasts, nepotist corporate machine builders, table-stabbing pragmatists, and Jane Byrne.

Capital W Weirdos for sure.

Even the Mayor who built a successful and powerful coalition of people that hate each other had strong Weirdo tendencies.

In some ways, Chicago’s Weirdo Mayors were fun: it’s fun to have your friends in other cities text you the meanest things you’ve ever read from queer kids online about the Mayor’s suit. I still think about that Rahm Emanuel knife story all the time.

Or, look at this picture of Jane Byrne — what’s going on there?

It’s pretty Weird, but also kind of fun.

But in other ways, Chicago’s Weirdo Mayors have been extremely not fun: there is lead in the water, man. There are problems. There are problems before you even get to the problems, problems like Chicago only ever having a single map.

This is why it matters, as his term begins, that Brandon Johnson is Chicago’s First Not A Weirdo Mayor.

What’s Brandon Johnson’s Deal?

Brandon Johnson is a middle school teacher (and a union organizer). He’s from the West Side. He went on hunger strike as part of the fight to save Dyett Elementary. He ran his campaign through an organizing infrastructure created by the success of the Chicago Teacher’s Union (and the work of CORE, starting over a decade ago) and the grassroots groups aligned with them.

He has the ability to regulate his emotions that even the worst kind of pundit can’t seem to get underneath (maybe because he taught middle school).

In his excitement about policy, if not in politics and demeanor, he’s enough of a pragmatic nerd to make Crain’s cautiously optimistic. The most negative coverage national outlets runoff ran on him was his very relatable problem of not being able to pay city fines and fees.

Maybe Johnson’s a little awkward, but that’s relatable too.

An awkward Mayor is different from a Weirdo one.

A friend who saw Johnson speak at his 15th campaign event in a day said he misspoke at one point, saying something like “We’re all sick of this.” That’s true! That’s maybe not what he meant to say, but it’s still true.

Even the backroom gossip about Johnson is boring. Unlike political figures that are Politically Just and True but personally a nightmare, the worst Johnson story I’ve heard seems to be that he sometimes seems very tired when working really hard, from a lot of people who also sometimes seem very tired when they’re working really hard.

That’s boring.

Brandon Johnson is not a Weirdo.

Still — it doesn’t mean he won’t become a Weirdo.

How Do You Stop From Becoming a Weirdo?

Ilhan Omar made a speech in 2018 that I think about a lot.

Here’s what she said:

“Every time I take a vote, all of you are walking in with me: that is why people react very differently towards me than they do to others.

When I first got elected, there was a gathering with the folks in the Movement for Black Lives where a young woman started crying. And she said, “Ilhan, I’m glad we did the work in getting you elected, but now I’m really sad. I’m afraid that once you get to DC, you’re going to become just like everyone else.”

And I said, “Well, everyone else becomes that way because they forget who they represent. I am never going to be at risk of becoming everyone else, who works in feeding corporate greed, because I know that all of you are going to sit me down at every moment that you get, and remind me what my purpose is, who I am fighting for and who has my back.

So, don’t desert us. We’re going to need you. Right?”.

As Omar said: the only thing that can keep you from becoming a Weirdo, like everyone else with power, is the power behind you.

Governing Power is Weird — But That’s Different

Luckily, Non-Weirdo Brandon Johnson has a lot of power behind him. He talked about that power in his inauguration speech.

A lot of things could happen in Johnson’s time as Mayor, but he can’t become just like all the other Weirdo Chicago Mayors — not with this power behind him.

Johnson has a huge group of socialist and progressive alders on board with the administration’s agenda and the backing of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, which has used its power to challenge the City in real ways, very recently.

This is the polar opposite of our last Mayor — she was a Weirdo, standout in this even for a Chicago Mayor, in part because she was backed only by her own well-lit well-funded media apparatus.

His power is also different from Weirdo Mayors like Emanuel or Daley — who certainly had power behind them, but the normal kind of power, the kind that protects money (Emanuel) or the kind that ran mostly on corruption (Daley).

Johnson’s power is even different from Harold Washington’s, arguably the least Weirdo Chicago Mayor. Washington didn’t have a functional union on his side (after he was elected the CTU went on strike and he let them stay striking longer than almost any other Mayor). Washington also had a whole slew of Alders blocking his every move in the Council Wars.

Arguably, no other socialist or leftist has had the kind of power over municipal government that Johnson has now — union organizer Jane McLevey called it governing power.

And as Omar pointed out in her speech, this kind of power, however weird, is the only way to stop from becoming a Weirdo.

Governing power doesn’t make you make only good decisions or do everything right. Johnson (and many others) will probably make bad weird decisions, good intentional decisions that lots of people don’t like, and just okay decisions. He will probably do some amalgamation of all of these, quite often.

Governing power also isn’t the same thing as knowing what to do next. This power doesn’t show Johnson or anyone working with him how to fix everything all at once or stop crises from happening or even plan an instant response to many other types of power that will challenge him, including national media, real estate, state government, and apparently, Texas.

Stacy Davis Gates said recently that she wished there was a book, not dissimilar to those puberty books (her words not mine!), that would explain how to start up a municipal government. As she said, “Everything is weird right now.”

Johnson isn’t a Weirdo because he has power behind him — even if it makes everything weird.

Want more niche takes on Chicago politics and hyperspecific use cases for the word Weirdo?