Mayor Brandon Johnson’s usual critics in the City Council and Chicago’s business community piled on as soon as his fourth budget proposal leaked last week, but the appetite for another full-out revolt is missing — for now.
“We don’t expect to take over the budget and try to rescue it like last year,” Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, told reporters after Johnson’s speech. “We can do it, but it’s his job to provide a balanced budget that’s transparent.”
It was a muted sequel compared with last December, when a victorious council majority glided out of those same chambers, legislative guns blazing after passing Chicago’s first aldermanic budget in four decades.
Why the architects behind that battle seem reluctant to seize control this time likely hinges on the year attached to this budget plan: 2027, when the mayor and all 50 council seats are up for election. Although they derided Johnson’s $17.6 billion spending proposal that revives a corporate employee head tax as a “nice” campaign strategy, they don’t seem eager to step into the arena with him just yet.
Aviva Bowen, a local Democratic strategist, said there’s no need for aldermen to rush because “voters hold the mayor accountable for the city budget.”
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“The mayor is framing the narrative against himself,” said Bowen, who consults for frequent Johnson critic Ald. Bill Conway, 34th. “He’s on an island of his own making. ‘Brandon Island’ is getting smaller and more lonely as members of his original coalition are taking the first boat out, so why step into the sea, right? Let him go.”
Johnson, meanwhile, is leaning into the role he’s always played: Chicago’s tax-the-rich crusader, with a splash of his former history teacher roots.
His “Fair Share” budget, a nod to Mayor Harold Washington’s 1986 spending plan of the same name, includes a $25-per-worker monthly fee for Chicago companies with over 125 employees, but with a rebate for headquarters located within designated areas mostly on the South, Southwest and West sides. It adds $132 million in spending and skips a property tax hike or layoffs.
“History does not have to repeat itself,” Johnson said during his budget speech, which touched on Washington’s term under President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Chicago and, more recently, President Donald Trump’s attacks on the city. “We do not have to allow corporate interests to lobby us into meeting these federal cuts with municipal abandonment.”
‘This is class war’
Though their solution remains unclear, Johnson’s opponents breathlessly rushed to object to the mayor’s plan. As mayoral ally Ald. William Hall, 6th, praised the proposal in front of a line of TV cameras moments after the speech, the rival bloc grew antsier with every passing minute.
Ald. Nicholas Sposato, 38th, mimicked yanking Hall away from the microphones. “Come on,” Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, said from the side as Hall continued. “All right,” Ald. Samantha Nugent, 39th, prodded.
Once the anti-Johnson group finally herded in front of the news crew, they totaled 23 aldermen — short of either a majority or the 34 needed to override a mayoral veto. They had 29 in their coalition that signed a letter last month drawing a red line against a head tax.
Though a majority would still have the leverage to stymie Johnson, aldermen might feel more heat to play ball with each week they inch closer to the end-of-year deadline to agree on a plan or risk a government shutdown.
Meanwhile, mayoral allies watching familiar battle lines form have a straightforward definition of the budget: class warfare.
Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd, smiled heartily as Johnson credited her in his speech with leading the mental health policies he wants to expand. But lingering on the empty floor of council chambers later, that smile was gone as she watched almost half her colleagues hustle to trash the package the mayor launched.
“This is what we have been seeing. We are a war of people who do not want to tax the rich against a mayor that is trying to tax the rich,” she said. “This is class war.”
The alderman said there is space for compromise on a head tax, but she does not expect those on the other side to play fair, especially during an election.
“But it doesn’t matter what I think about what their intentions are,” she said. “The work has to be done, and the attempts need to be made to negotiate in good faith.”
She added that aldermen’s public efforts to quickly rebuff Johnson’s proposal are election-motivated and that they’re “doing the same they’re saying the mayor is doing.”
“There is an election coming,” she said. “(They are) aligning themselves with the interest of the people who don’t want the mayor there. It is the same thing.”
Mike Ruemmler, president of the One Future Illinois PAC, which has blasted out texts against Johnson and his council supporters, said a campaign-style budget fight serves to shore up the mayor’s base and get him into a runoff.
But Ruemmler said it also risks alienating the rest of the electorate — including voters represented by progressive aldermen who may be vulnerable in 2027.
“Everybody who is most closely affiliated with the mayor,” Ruemmler said, rattling off council members for the 1st, 6th, 12th, 25th, 35th and 48th wards. “The more they align themselves up with him as we march toward Feb. 23, the heavier the albatross around their necks.”
Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, said to keep those negative text message campaigns coming so that constituents have her ward office number.
“Absolutely not,” Taylor said when asked if she believes her colleagues can stay cool and logical. “Part of this is because the mayor has to work with more people to make good decisions. The other part of this is they just hate that a Black man is in charge.”
The outspoken progressive offered some advice to Johnson: include the business community this time.
A joint statement from organizations for building owners, manufacturers, retailers, the chamber of commerce and the business-backed Civic Committee said the mayor’s head and lease tax proposals would “further dull Chicago’s competitive edge by discouraging job creation and economic growth” but welcomed “the opportunity to engage” with budgeteers and the mayor.
A mayor-sized anvil?
Some progressives are already having to explain why they stood with the mayor on various issues, Bowen said. She pointed to Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, who recently addressed his abstention on the vote to check the mayor’s debt issuance powers.
“There’s an old saying: If you’re defending, you’re losing,” Bowen said. “The fact that (La Spata) thinks to do that demonstrates that he recognizes the vulnerability.”
Earlier this month, Johnson invited each alderman to a meeting and asked them to share their own proposals for the budget, an early sign he will try to place the burden of making cuts and raising taxes on his opponents if they reject his ideas. But for now, his council foes are trying to downplay whether history will repeat itself.
“I don’t know that. We haven’t had any discussions on that,” Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th, said regarding the likelihood of an aldermanic counterproposal. “But as the mayor has often said: It’s his job to propose a budget. It’s our job to vote on a budget.”
Progressive Caucus co-chair Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, said his edict to colleagues was to be less tribal: “When we start separating ourselves by clique and crew, we’re not going to get to that 26.”
He chuckled and said, “See y’all Dec. 31,” when asked whether he believes the head tax will survive.
“It might be kind of like last year, up until the buzzer,” Vasquez said. “The fact that it’s an election year is going to further complicate that. I think people are going to want to take stances that are independent of the math.”
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To be clear, the governing stakes for the budget fight are far more consequential to everyday Chicagoans.
According to supporters of Johnson’s proposal, the city is coming to the rescue of its most vulnerable under the Trump regime, and safeguarding historic gains in violence reduction and other social services without hiking property taxes. To opponents, the plan will kill job growth and saddle future generations with debt obligations the city cannot afford — especially after Chicago has received three downgrades from credit rating agencies under Johnson.
The mayor is not letting his bully pulpit go to waste. Johnson’s team last week carefully rolled out bits of his spending plan in media outlets across the city, part of an effort to fuse his new taxes to expenditures like expanded tree-trimming and violence interruption work. His supporters filled the chambers during his address and drowned out naysaying spectators with chants of “Four more years!” as he took the dais.
On Thursday, the mayor joined former congressional candidate Kat Abugazaleh for a virtual town hall, looking at the camera directly as he called on voters to “move as a unit to make sure that this fair share budget passes.”
“So I’m counting on you,” Johnson said.