Mayor Brandon Johnson is losing one of his staunchest City Council allies.
Ald. Mike Rodriguez (22nd), the Workforce Development Committee chair who helped Johnson deliver two of the proudest accomplishments on his progressive to-do list, has decided not to seek re-election.
“My daughter’s entering high school. I’ve got four years left with that beautiful baby. I’ve got an ailing father. I’ve got a chess champion son… It’s the right time for me” to step back, said Rodriguez, who all but endorsed 10th police district council member Elianne Bahena as his replacement.
“I was at a soccer tournament in Minnesota with my son in July… And I remember having to walk away from the cheering crowd because I wanted City Council members to hear my `aye’ [vote] in a committee meeting… Half the trip, my wife was telling my kids to be quiet because I had calls for work… I want to be present for my family. “
Rodriguez, 48, is the second veteran alderperson to choose political retirement over a re-election bid. Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), one of Johnson’s most outspoken critics, is also leaving the City Council.
A protege of retiring U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Rodriguez has spent his two terms on the City Council positioning himself as a champion for working people. He was the chief co-sponsor of a Fair Workweek Ordinance that advanced key protections for employees facing unpredictable schedules.
He championed another important protection for Chicago workers through the Paid Leave Ordinance that granted employees a minimum of ten paid days off. For Rodriguez, those accomplishments were more personal than political.
The motivation dates back to his childhood. He recalled that his mother was able to take him, his brother and sister to Taste of Chicago — with a Home Run Inn pizza and a boat ride in between — because she was a union worker who had paid time off.
“I think about how many Chicagoans can’t even take a day off to stay with their kid home from school if they’re sick — can’t help an ailing mother or father if they need to be there,” Rodriguez told the Sun-Times.
“That’s why I was so proud to be the champion and pass the most expansive paid leave policy in the country… The first two years of this administration, I’ll put my record as workforce development chair against anybody else’s in the history of the city.”
Both accomplishments on Johnson’s progressive to-do-list were achieved early in the mayor’s administration. But it’s been downhill from there.
Johnson used his third veto to preserve another key promise on his progressive agenda — eliminating the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers — and managed to make it stick.
But an emboldened City Council then froze the hourly pay of tipped workers at 76% of the minimum wage for the next two years for large restaurants, and for four more years for smaller establishments.
After renegade alderpersons rejected the mayor’s corporate head tax and approved an alternative city budget that legalized video gambling terminals, Johnson joined forces with Bally’s in lobbying for a repeal that Rodriguez expects to fail.
“It was the strangest thing to do to undercut Bally’s… They give us $4 million annually. But I’m also dealing in political reality. That side won with their vote… Video gaming’s here,” he said.
Rodriguez acknowledged that the “struggle to stand up for working people” continues and will not be “solved in this mayoral administration or even the next.” But he hopes to join his Southwest Side colleague, Ald. Julia Ramirez (12th) in passing protections for warehouse workers before leaving office in May.
Rodriguez’s tenure included Hilco’s botched smokestack implosion at the former Crawford coal generating station and Operation Midway Blitz, which menaced residents of Little Village a year ago. At one point, members of Rodriguez’s own aldermanic staff were swept off the streets.
Rodriguez said he won’t forget standing on the corner of 26th and Pulaski watching now-former U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino and his agents take a left turn down 26th Street and snatch a man in front of a six-year-old boy.
“This kid witnessed a person being taken indiscriminately because they were brown-skinned. What I saw was the devil in Bovino. I looked him eye to eye,” Rodriguez said.
“I get a flash grenade at my foot. That smoke from that grenade filled the car of the child who was sitting there. I remember seeing that child devastated, crying, not knowing what the heck was going on. I just think about this being a core memory for that child for the rest of his life.”