* From last night’s mayoral debate…

Moderator: But first, let’s get to Mr. Vallas. Last year, you did participate in an event held by Awake Illinois. It is a far right group and it uses rhetoric that you later admitted was hateful. Also in 2009, you said in an interview, you thought of yourself as more of a Republican. [..] What do you say to Chicago voters who question your party affiliation?

Paul Vallas: Let me point out that I’m a lifelong Democrat. I worked for Dawn Clark Netsch and Phil Rock in the Senate. I actually ran for office as a Democrat in the Democratic primary against Rod Blagojevich. And of course, Pat Quinn’s running mate in 2014, which was five years after that interview. And of course, when I ran for mayor, I’ve always declared, and I’ve always registered in the Democratic primary. So my history has always been that of a Democrat.

Moderator: Mr. Johnson, you attended an event in 2020. It was called ‘We Don’t Call Police.’ And that same year, you said it was a political goal to defund the police. […] So, Mr. Johnson, what do you say to Chicagoans who do want more officers in their neighborhoods?

Brandon Johnson: Well, my public safety plan does just that. It’s why my public safety plan, we’re going to promote, train and hire 200 more detectives so that we can actually solve crime in the city of Chicago. You know, it’s going to cost me roughly $50 million to make sure that we are actually administering the consent decree. Right now, we’re not administering the consent decree and we’re not solving violence in the city of Chicago. By promoting and hiring 200 more detectives, we actually can solve crime because it

Moderator: What happens to those officers who are promoted? What happens to refilling those?

Johnson: Look, the way you recruit officers, you’ve got to make sure, people are working on the front line, you can’t ask police officers to do their job and someone’s else. The fact of the matter is, almost 40 percent of the 911 calls are coming through are mental health crises. I know what it’s like to wake up and serve the frontline, right, as a public school teacher, and you don’t ask people to do their job and someone else’s. We have to make sure that we’re providing the support on the front line so that we can alleviate the pressure from police officers so that they can deal with the more violent, serious crimes.

In 2009, Vallas geared up to run for county board president as a Republican, then backed away. And his former running mate Pat Quinn endorsed Chuy Garcia in the first round.

* Later…

Vallas: Brandon was in part responsible for the shutting down of one of the poorest school systems in the country, with devastating consequences, for 15 consecutive months, and three times threatening to strike to force the mayor to keep schools closed. And if you look at the crime statistics, and you look at the violence and you look at the dislocation and declining test scores, you can see the results.

Johnson: A 100-year pandemic was responsible for everything being shut down. But when you’re supported by someone like Ken Griffin, who loves DeSantis, right-wing extremists who deny the fact that we actually had a pandemic, that’s a problem that we have when you are part of the Republican Party, and that’s why the city of Chicago cannot afford Republicans like Paul Vallas.

Please pardon all transcription errors.

…Adding… Politico says today that US Rep. James Clyburn is endorsing Brandon Johnson. But Johnson once accused Clyborn of “making excuses” for “White supremacy.” Here’s a December of 2020 Johnson comment on Clyburn from an opposition research file…

I am deeply concerned about just the presentation that the former President of the United States made around the movement to defund the police and I talked about it last week for those of you who got up with me every single morning last week as I filled in for Santita Jackson. Thank you so much, that was quite the lift there. But you know what President Obama said, what James Clyburn said, Congressman from South Carolina who played an intricate part in delivering the state of South Carolina for the current president-elect, Joe Biden. You also had even here, right here in Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, that took a shot. You know, really, really low blow at the movement. And so former President Barack Obama believes that the effort to essentially end and eradicate racism from a system that was designed to ultimately capture and to torture Black people, and that system, of course, has been protected over the years. That our work, to move away from this carceral racist system that continues to brutalize and terrorize unarmed Black men especially, but it certainly has had its role in killing Brown folks and women. And we’ve seen case after case after case, that he seemed to have a stronger critique of the movement. And it’s, you know, so-called hashtag, which is a conversation in and of itself, than the folks who are actually causing the harm. But he’s not alone, James Clyburn made this very clear too, that he thought that that was the reason why Democrats were losing. Lori Lightfoot, who the mayor of Chicago who retreated hard to this very conservative approach towards more policing, and calling for more arrests and more incarceration, even though we’ve seen over the course of 40 years that that is just not the right pathway. President Obama caught it, I think he called ‘catchy.’ I think the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, again, very dismissive of this work. I am interested in your thoughts around just the effort of just organizing to get people to understand how evil the system is, as well as your response to the critique, particularly that’s coming from Black elected leadership, which I’m not opposed to criticizing, and it’s not like racism doesn’t exist. But you can see how White supremacy moves its way into the, to the, essentially to the veins, into the blood, into the pulse of Black electeds, where they’re making excuses quite frankly, for White supremacy

Please pardon all transcription errors.

* Isabel’s roundup…

* Fox Chicago: After the forum, both candidates took jabs at one another. Johnson slammed Vallas for his 2021 comments against teaching Critical Race Theory. Vallas has since said he advocates for teaching African American history year-round. “This book was highlighting and lifting up the fact that Blackness in the city of Chicago has value, Paul Vallas banned that book,” Johnson said. Vallas was asked why he didn’t give a response to Johnson when he was accused of being associated with right-wing extremists. “I didn’t want to turn it into a free for all, and this is what Johnson is going to do. He doesn’t want to run on his record, or lack of record,” Vallas said.

* CBS Chicago: Johnson repeatedly attacked Vallas on the grounds that his “budgetary scheme” in previous roles in the 1990s was at least partially to blame for the city’s current financial trouble. He said Vallas worked with the Republican Party in the 1990s to take the dollars that were supposed to go toward pensions – and decades later, the city was left on the hook for $2.5 billion in property taxes that had to be raised to make up the money. Vallas rebutted that as city budget director under Mayor Richard M. Daley, he passed balanced budgets without raising property taxes once. He added that under his watch chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, property tax hikes averaged only 1.5 percent.

* WBEZ: Vallas dismissed the financial broadside as “nonsense” and a fictionalized account of his six-year tenure as CEO at CPS. “When I took over the Chicago Public Schools, the pensions were 80% funded. When I left, they were over 100% funded. That’s a fact,” Vallas said. “It was not until the pension holiday that was enacted in 2009 or 2010 when they basically stopped making contributions … that the pensions went south. … Actuarially based funding mandates was a very good idea because it allowed us to use money for like teacher pay raises, after-school and extended day programs.”

* WGN: “We’re in this predicament because of the bad accounting measures of Mr. Vallas,” Johnson said. “The truth of the matter is he has not put forth a budget plan because when he put forth a budget plan four years ago, he came in ninth place.”

* ABC Chicago: Vallas and Johnson both agreed public safety is the city’s top problem, impacting neighborhoods, public transportation and downtown business viability, but they offered different solutions. “You make the type of leadership changes and changes in scheduling and changes in management and personnel that do not cause 1,000 police officers to leave every year,” Vallas sad.”We’re gonna promote, train and hire 200 more detectives so we can actually solve crime in the city of Chicago,” said Johnson.

* Sun-Times: Both candidates accused each other of trying to, as Vallas put it, “make race the issue” in the campaign between Black and white candidates where the African-American vote is likely to be decisive. Johnson appeared to fan those flames when he accused Vallas of “hanging out with right-wing extremists who have attacked women” on the issue of abortion and of opposing the teaching of Black history in Chicago Public Schools.

* The Hill: “Paul Vallas, on the other hand, doesn’t believe that children of the city of Chicago should learn Black history. So if we eliminate the type of history that Paul Vallas is trying to promote, they wouldn’t know that the first Black mayor of the city of Chicago was Harold Washington,” Johnson said. […] “Just nonsense again,” Vallas responded at one point. “I actually integrated Black history and all the curriculum in it, and then moved beyond just Black history month in February. I also incorporated African studies into the world history curriculum.”

* Politico: The Chicago Teachers Union is raising members’ dues $8 per month to go toward its political action committee paying for Johnson’s mayoral campaign. CTU’s executive board announced the hike here.

* Tribune: During the debate, Johnson also attempted to tamp down concerns that he is too close with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, which endorsed and has funded him, but he declined to name an issue on which he disagreed with the organization. “I have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the city of Chicago, and once I’m mayor of the city of Chicago, I will no longer be a member of the Chicago Teachers Union,” Johnson said.

* Streetsblog: Johnson’s response mostly focused on strategies to make transit operate more efficiently and keep CTA staffing at full strength so as to avoid service gaps. “Right now our public transit system is unreliable and it’s unsafe,” he said. “This is why I’m committed to making sure we’re making critical investments, particularly for working people who overwhelmingly rely on public transportation. So we’re going to increase the number of bus-only lanes… We’re going to make sure that there are traffic signals that give preference to [buses.]” […] In contrast, Vallas’s answer focused on addressing crime through more policing. “The CTA is on the verge of financial crisis,” he accurately noted. Vallas cited a stat (apparently solely reported by the conservative website Wirepoints, in an article that called for cutting CTA service) that CTA farebox revenue is only currently accounting for 18 percent of the operating budget when, under state law, it’s normally supposed to account for 50 percent.

* Bloomberg: Griffin, 54, said in an interview this week in Palm Beach, Florida, that he was done with Chicago politics but wants a Vallas victory. “I’ve had enough of Illinois,” Griffin said. “I will tell you, I really admire my colleagues who have supported Paul Vallas publicly with their voice and with their money. I hope that Paul Vallas becomes the mayor of Chicago.”

* Crain’s: Johnson also repeatedly brought up Chicago’s former wealthiest citizen Ken Griffin’s endorsement of Vallas, using Griffin’s monumental financial support of Republicans and current backing for controversial Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to tie Vallas to the GOP. Vallas, who has received six-figure sums from execs at Griffin’s Citadel, didn’t directly address Griffin’s endorsement, but said the wealthy donors lining up behind his campaign are attracted to him “because they know the city is in crisis and they need someone who can manage the city” and “pull together a leadership team that can run every department.”

* NBC Sports: “I don’t support billion-dollar subsidies for sports teams and I certainly don’t support putting billions of dollars into renovations at Soldier Field,” Vallas said. Johnson drew on his emotional connection to the franchise, invoking memories of growing up with the Super Bowl Shuffle before iterating his desire to negotiate with the franchise while brushing off the idea of subsidizing any potential project.