By Joseph Jordan for the National Justice Party
The sole white person in the large field of candidates in the race to become mayor of Chicago came out on top yesterday.
Paul Vallas, a perennial Democratic candidate, ran a single-issue campaign focusing on the Second City’s black violent crime problem and garnered 33.7% of the vote. His impressive performance rode a wave of strong support in white working class neighborhoods, but also some liberal and affluent ones. He will be facing Brandon Johnson, who came in second place with 20.3% of the vote, in an April runoff.
Lori Lightfoot, who has attracted international attention for her anti-white rhetoric and incompetence, became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to not be re-elected.
After winning a mere 17.1% of the vote and failing to qualify for the next round, Lightfoot — one of seven black candidates in a group of nine in a city that is less than 30% black — blamed racist voters for her disastrous showing.
The incumbent’s campaign outraised her opponents with a formidable $6.26 million dollar war chest, with large sums contributed by Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts and Jewish capitalist activist Fred Eyechaner.
Vallas, who proudly touted the support of the right-wing Fraternal Order of Police, capitalized on the fact that Lightfoot oversaw a violent black crime increase of 40% since taking office in 2019 and unreluctantly promises to take the “handcuffs” off the Chicago Police Department.
The black lesbian mayor’s rallies in the run up to the election centered on whipping up hatred of white people, specifically singling out Vallas and the other non-black candidate, a Mexican US Representative named Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, as racial enemies. Lightfoot’s hateful rhetoric intensified to the point that Johnson, who is himself black, was made to condemn her by saying, “We can do better than this, y’all.”
The enthusiastically pro-police Vallas’ commanding victory in rich, white and historically left-wing “Lakefront Liberal” areas such as Lincoln Park and Lakeview reveals a transformation in white liberal perception since the George Floyd racial reckoning of 2020. Past anti-racist moral panics in American history largely impacted working class whites and spared the elite, but in this cycle, black violence has led to spikes in crime where the upper class live, eat, shop and go to school.
During the 2020 riots, Chicago police union leader John Catanzara retaliated against elite whites and Jewish people providing institutional support for the criminals against law enforcement by encouraging his officers to call in sick and stop protecting their neighborhoods. This passive labor strike led to previously peaceful upper class residential areas being hit with a sudden crime wave. Last year, it was reported that citizens in Chicago’s wealthy Northside even began hiring private security to combat the explosion in carjackings and assaults.
This pattern appears to follow similar examples in San Francisco, where a coalition of liberal whites and Asians recalled pro-criminal District Attorney Chesa Boudin. In New York City, the election of Eric Adams also put this trend on display.
Polls show that Vallas holds a comfortable lead over Johnson in a two-man match. It should be noted that Vallas also outperformed his polls. Johnson’s main path to victory is to make overt racial appeals to unite the black vote and possibly other minorities in the highly balkanized city.
The media continues to run hostile pieces attacking Vallas for supporting stop and frisk, being anti-gay, being secretly a Republican, and more in hopes that this will block his prospects. So far, this crusade has struggled to gain traction, as his white base and segments of supporters in the Spanish speaking population have made it clear that they don’t care.