Mayor Brandon Johnson’s reelection petitions will hit the streets Tuesday — the first day to start gathering the 12,500 signatures needed to qualify for the mayoral ballot — but that doesn’t mean the embattled incumbent has decided to seek a second term.
Johnson’s political director Christian Perry said it simply means there are “groups that supported us last time that would like to see him run” and there is a “good deal of organic energy on the ground to see his leadership continue.”
“They reached out to us, asked if it was OK, and we gave the OK that they could absolutely” circulate petitions on Johnson’s behalf. “But the mayor still hadn’t come to a decision,” Perry said.
Until Johnson officially launches his campaign for a second term, there’s always a chance that he won’t — even though his political foot soldiers in the Chicago Teachers Union will have no trouble gathering more than enough signatures by the Oct. 26 filing deadline to get him on the ballot and keep him there.
That’s not the case with the rest of the crowded mayoral field.
Veteran political operative Victor Reyes, who has joined the mayoral campaign team of cardiologist Dr. Lisa Nee, said he expects the field of roughly a dozen mayoral challengers to shrink to eight candidates who can gather 25,000 valid signatures — the amount he believes is needed to survive a petition challenge.
“It’s going to be the institutional candidates who survive — the candidates who can afford to buy all of those signatures,” said Reyes, who ran the now-defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization at the center of the city hiring scandal under former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Reyes said he has advised newcomer Nee’s campaign to budget $150,000 just to get on the ballot and stay on it.
“When I worked for Daley, we filed 100,000 [signatures]. The Daley operation would get 50,000 and the ward organizations would give us a whole bunch as well. Today, you don’t have ward organizations, and you don’t have patronage, so everybody’s got to pay vendors and contractors to get signatures,” Reyes said.
“You get a few volunteers, but nowhere near what you will get from professional organizations. And it’s expensive. You’ve got to pay vendors anywhere from $4 to $5 to $6 per signature. The closer you get to the end of the signature [deadline], it goes up. Then it’s $10 a signature, and it goes crazy because people are scrambling to get valid signatures.”
When filing of nominating petitions begins
The first day to file nominating petitions is Oct. 19. The last day is Oct. 26. The five-day objection period begins on Oct. 27 and ends on Nov. 2.
That triggers the painstaking, costly process of attorneys examining the signatures of rival candidates. Reyes calls that pivotal period “structuring the race.”
With a campaign war chest of nearly $22 million, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who has not formally announced yet, can afford to challenge the nominating petitions of outgoing Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, Cook County Board of Review Commissioner George Cardenas, U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley or anyone else he thinks might siphon support from him.
Giannoulias might choose to try to knock off the ballot a few of the political newcomers if he thinks they could draw enough single-digit support to keep him out of a potential runoff, or prevent him from winning the 50%-plus-one needed to win the race outright in the first round.
Aware that Johnson’s road to reelection runs through the African American community, Giannoulias might ask some of his supporters to siphon money indirectly to Chicago Housing Authority board member Matthew Brewer, who recently announced his run for mayor, or perennial candidate Willie Wilson to help them survive a petition challenge.
“The guys with all of the money — they want a carefully structured race. … That makes a huge difference because of racial-pattern voting. Because of gender voting,” Reyes said.
“Alexi Giannoulias can afford to spend as much as $500,000 to get on the ballot. … Susana [Mendoza] should know how to get on the ballot. She’s done it before. The [Chicago] Teachers Union knows how to get people on the ballot. Some of the newer candidates who haven’t run before may not understand the difficulty of getting on the ballot.”
Pappas in the race ‘no matter how crowded it gets’
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas has a long-standing political rivalry with Giannoulias, a fellow Greek American. Like Quigley, Pappas said Monday she plans to start circulating her mayoral nominating petitions this week, and she plans to stay in the race no matter how crowded it gets.
The 78-year-old treasurer didn’t mince he words when asked why she is so determined to stop Giannoulias.
“If you want to be mayor of the city of Chicago, your IQ has to be higher than your body temperature. … That’s what’s going to be required in the mayor’s race. I’m not picking on him. I’m just saying it’s got to be somebody who can handle it,” Pappas said.
The Giannoulias campaign declined to comment on Pappas’ remark.
Giannoulias is already using the millions he has received from business leaders, along with support within trade unions, to blanket the airwaves with feel-good commercials that boost his name recognition.
Cardenas barely survived a petition challenge for his seat on the Cook County Board of Review. His mayoral nominating petitions will hit the streets Tuesday — this time with “controls in place” to make certain those signatures are “good from the get-go.”
“Last time, it was a district, and our folks did not do due diligence to verify that. A lot of our signatures turned out to be out of the district. We won’t have to worry about that this time. This is the city. They won’t be going to the ‘burbs,” Cardenas said. “We’re walking on eggshells because of what happened last time. It won’t happen this time.”
Johnson has just over $631,309 in the bank, $21 million less than Giannoulias.
The mayor’s failure to shift his fundraising into high gear, his refusal to declare for reelection and his anemic public approval ratings have fueled speculation that Johnson may just walk away after a single term and avoid the political embarrassment that Lori Lightfoot suffered by becoming the first incumbent mayor in 40 years to be eliminated in the first round.
A strategy memo prepared by Michael Ruemmler and Jonathan Swain, top executives of One Future Illinois, a public policy nonprofit created for a more moderate mayoral and City Council agenda, outlines the rocky road ahead for Johnson. It points to a poll of 801 registered Chicago voters conducted for One Future Illinois June 9-15 that shows Johnson with a 66% percent disapproval rate and 71% “unlikely to vote for his re-election.”
“These are not the numbers of a mayor preparing to run on results. They point to a narrower strategy: Consolidate the remaining base, divide the opposition and exploit every advantage of incumbency,” the memo states.
Noting that Johnson is “cash-poor, but City Hall rich,” the memo predicts the embattled incumbent will “give every part of his remaining coalition a reason to fear his defeat.”
“Teachers will hear school-closings. Progressive and Latino voters will hear Trump. Black voters will hear disinvestment. Service workers will hear attacks on wages and paid leave,” the internal memo states. “The concerns are real. The manipulation is turning them into a personal loyalty test: ‘Hold Johnson accountable, and you help your enemies.’“
Perry acknowledged that Johnson is taking full advantage of the power of incumbency and the free media that comes with it.
Although the Chicago Teachers Union gave Johnson $2.3 million in 2023, it’s now preoccupied with elected school board races. But Perry said he is confident Johnson will have the resources he needs to win a second term.
“Paul Vallas lit almost $30 million on fire to not be successful,” Perry said, referring to Johnson’s opponent in the 2023 mayoral runoff.