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      5 Reasons Democrats Picked Chicago for Their 2024 Convention

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      Party leaders said the choice reflected their momentum in the Midwest. But the political map was only one factor behind the decision.President Biden’s decision to host the Democratic National Convention in Chicago represents the triumph of practicality over sentimentality.He picked a major Midwestern city with ample labor-friendly hotels, good transportation and a billionaire governor happy to underwrite the event. That combination overpowered the pull Biden felt from runner-up Atlanta, the capital of a state Mr. Biden won for Democrats in 2020 for the first time in a generation.Chicago — unlike the last four Democratic convention cities — is not in a presidential battleground. But it is the cultural and economic capital of the American Midwest. The United Center, the convention arena, sits about an hour away from two critical presidential battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan, with sometimes-competitive Minnesota nearby.Democrats used the choice to highlight their commitment to protecting the “blue wall” of Midwestern states that have been critical to their White House victories. But the electoral map wasn’t the only factor. Here are the top reasons Chicago was selected.Last week, Chicago elected Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat, as the new mayor.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesLaborMr. Biden said during his first year in office that he would be “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.”So it would have been politically tricky at best for him to send a national political convention to Atlanta, a city with comparatively few unionized hotels in a so-called right-to-work state.An Atlanta convention could have prompted organized labor to limit its financial contributions, or even orchestrate outright boycotts. When President Barack Obama took the Democratic convention to Charlotte in 2012, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers skipped the event.“Some of our labor members have felt that they’ve been left behind,” said Lonnie Stephenson, who retired as president of the I.B.E.W. last year. “I think this shows the commitment of the Democratic Party to support that part of the country.”Money and J.B. PritzkerConventions are expensive and the money to pay for them can be hard to come by. The nominee does not want to divert dollars for campaigning in battleground states to an elaborate party. And the Democratic base is increasingly hostile to many of the large corporations that have historically underwritten conventions.Enter J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, a billionaire who also happens to have been a former top party fund-raiser.“We have a very generous local bunch of corporate leaders and corporations in the Fortune 500,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said.Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesMr. Pritzker was central to Chicago’s bid. He personally lobbied Mr. Biden. And before the announcement Tuesday, he privately pledged fund-raising for the convention, which is a relief to party officials..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“We have a very generous local bunch of corporate leaders and corporations in the Fortune 500,” Mr. Pritzker said in an interview on Tuesday. “I’m, of course, personally committed to engage in the fund-raising that’s necessary.”Implicit in that promise is that Mr. Pritzker, who spent more than $300 million on his two campaigns for governor, will serve as a financial backstop if outside money does not materialize.Political geographyDemocrats were quick to talk about other factors. They held up the selection of Chicago as a symbol of the party’s investment in the Midwest, and the central role the region will play in Mr. Biden’s path to victory in 2024.“The Midwest reflects America,” said Jaime Harrison, the party chairman.Republicans had the same idea. They announced last August that their convention would be in Milwaukee in July 2024, meaning that the two conventions will be within driving distance. (The Democrats will meet in August.)But the reality is that the political implications for the host city and state are often overblown.Democrats hosted in North Carolina (2012) and Pennsylvania (2016), and still lost those states. Republicans hosted in Minnesota (2008) and Florida (2012), and lost both times. And in 2016, Republicans hosted Donald J. Trump’s nominating convention in Cleveland but the event divided the party’s Ohio leadership. The Republican governor, John Kasich, and its senator, Rob Portman, largely stayed away, then Republicans went on to win the state anyway.Still, the decision stung in Georgia, where Democrats had made a strong political case for hosting.Mayor Andre Dickens of Atlanta called Georgia “the battleground that will decide the 2024 election.”And Erick Allen, a former state representative who is the party chairman in suburban Cobb County, said Democrats were making a mistake.“I think they got it wrong,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to use the convention in Atlanta as a regional win for the Democratic Party. And I think that’s now going to be harder.”Logistics, logistics, logisticsConventions are international events that require tens of thousands of hotel rooms and a transportation and law enforcement network that can involve dozens of local, state and federal agencies.Chicago here had an advantage in the number of hotel rooms, 44,000, within a reasonable distance of the convention site, along with a public transit network that has three train lines that have stops within a few blocks of the arena.“The bottom line is Chicago can hold a convention of this size in a very centrally located, easy to get around way,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat.More compelling to the Democratic National Committee was the fact that Chicago’s United Center sits on a plot of 45 acres of privately owned land, making it easier to secure and control activities outside. The arena also has twice as many suites as Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, which would have hosted the convention there. Those suites will serve as magnets for the party’s high-dollar donors.Crime and local politicsIt’s pretty clear how Republicans will portray Mr. Biden’s convention city.A spokesman for the campaign arm of House Republicans, Will Reinert, mocked the selection: “What’s the bigger concern: sirens drowning out nominating speeches or what items attendees must leave at home to make room for their bulletproof vest in their suitcase?”(Republicans notably did not mention crime rates when they selected Milwaukee, which had a higher homicide rate than Chicago in 2022.) Democrats answered that pandemic-era spikes in crime were easing, in Chicago and across the country. As a political issue, the tough-on-crime messaging may also be losing its power. The city this month elected a new mayor, Brandon Johnson, who defeated a more conservative rival backed by the local police unions who focused his campaign on the issue of addressing the city’s crime.“The truth is that things have gotten better and better,” Mr. Pritzker said. “It’s a recovery across the nation in major cities that includes a recovery on the issue of crime. Things are better than they were.”Maya King More

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      How Brandon Johnson Made Up Ground and Won Chicago’s Mayoral Race

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      Mr. Johnson, a progressive county commissioner, won over liberal voters across the city after finishing second in a first round of balloting.CHICAGO — In the final days of the mayoral campaign in Chicago, Brandon Johnson drew more than 4,000 people to a jubilant rally featuring Senator Bernie Sanders, who endorsed him. He crisscrossed the South and West Sides, visiting six churches in a single Sunday. In a last push on Election Day, an army of volunteers for Mr. Johnson knocked on 46,000 doors across the city, whipping up enthusiasm and encouraging last-minute voters to get to the polls.The coalition that Mr. Johnson needed — young people, Black voters on the South and West Sides, a sizable number of Latino voters, white progressives on the North Side and along the lakefront — was coming together.On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson, a Democratic county commissioner who was unknown to many Chicagoans a few months ago, came from behind to defeat Paul Vallas, a more conservative Democrat and a former school executive who entered the runoff campaign with a significantly larger base of support. Mr. Vallas, 69, was the favorite of many moderate and conservative voters, running on a law-and-order platform in which he promised to expand the police force and crack down on crime.On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson, a county commissioner who was unknown to many Chicagoans a few months ago, came from behind to defeat Paul Vallas.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesBut even though large numbers of Chicagoans had said in polls that they considered public safety to be the most important issue in the election, it was Mr. Johnson, 47, who captured the slim majority of votes in Tuesday’s election. He tapped into the vast network of progressive groups in liberal Chicago — from the powerful teachers’ union to smaller, ward-based political organizations — who focused on field work to rally voters. Mr. Johnson pitched voters on a public safety plan that went beyond policing but distanced himself from past support for defunding of law enforcement.Chicago voters chose Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and union organizer with more liberal polices than his opponent Paul Vallas.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesMr. Johnson took advantage of widespread doubts among Democratic voters over Mr. Vallas’s party identification, ever since the emergence of a television interview from 2009 in which Mr. Vallas called himself “more of a Republican than a Democrat.”And Mr. Johnson capitalized on key endorsements to bolster his credibility among voters who did not know him well, especially those from Senator Sanders and Representative Jesús G. García, a progressive congressman with a base of support in mostly Hispanic neighborhoods on the West Side.“You walk into a runoff with a certain base, but then you’ve got to expand your base beyond that,” Andre Vasquez, a City Council member who organized for Mr. Johnson, said on Wednesday. “The Latino community did better for Brandon than expected. The North Side performed well. It feels like a coalition of everything.”Still, Mr. Johnson will take charge of a deeply divided Chicago. Mr. Vallas, who was once in charge of the city’s public school system, won nearly 49 percent of the vote to Mr. Johnson’s 51 percent, with thousands of mail-in ballots yet to be counted. In the first round of voting in February, Mr. Vallas received the most votes. Large numbers of Chicagoans said in polls that they considered public safety to be the most important issue in the election.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesAhead of the runoff, Mr. Johnson worked to increase turnout among young voters and broaden his support among Hispanic residents.“That’s one thing that really caught my attention about Brandon: He’s out here with my people, my Hispanic community, advocating for himself,” said Lily Cruz, 22, a college student from the Southwest Side who voted for Mr. Johnson. “I feel like he has put more effort than I’ve seen any other politician that wants to run for office,” she added.Mr. Johnson performed well in some largely white neighborhoods near Lake Michigan and in predominantly Hispanic areas northwest of downtown, just as he had in a first round of voting in February. But unlike then, Mr. Johnson, who is Black, dominated on Tuesday in wards with Black majorities, winning 80 percent of the vote in some of those areas on the South and West Sides.Chicago Mayor Runoff Election Results More

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      After His Arraignment, Trump Lashes Out

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      More from our inbox:‘A Great Day for Liberals’ in Wisconsin and ChicagoA Renewed Interest in Freudian PsychoanalysisLos cargos contra Trump representan la culminación de una investigación de casi cinco años de duración.Dave Sanders para The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Charged With 34 Felonies” (front page, April 5):After Judge Juan M. Merchan warned at Donald Trump’s arraignment that all parties must refrain from making statements about the case with the potential to incite violence and civil unrest, what does the former president who can’t keep his mouth shut do during his speech a few hours later?He says hateful things about Judge Merchan and his family, and vilifies District Attorney Alvin Bragg, District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and the special counsel Jack Smith.And one of the former president’s sons put a photograph of Judge Merchan’s daughter on social media — a clear invitation to violence.It’s time for the former president to be gagged. And when he speaks out with hateful words again, a contempt order and jail time may put a sock in his mouth. About time.Gail ShorrWilmette, Ill.To the Editor:Crowd size has always been important to Donald Trump. It is the metric he uses, along with TV ratings, to measure his impact, to gauge his popularity, to feed his ego.The crowd that showed up Tuesday at his arraignment was hardly composed overwhelmingly of Trump supporters. It looked as if the media and anti-Trump people more than countered his base.No matter how Mr. Trump spins it, no matter how many times at his future rallies he proclaims an overwhelming showing of support in New York City, the camera doesn’t lie.It was good to see him cut down to size Tuesday. For the first time in his adult life he could not control the narrative. He called for a massive protest, he predicted “death and destruction” if he was charged, and he got neither.Len DiSesaDresher, Pa.To the Editor:The April 5 front-page headline “Even as Biden Has Oval Office, Predecessor Has the Spotlight” is a statement that is true only because your newspaper and other media outlets allow Donald Trump to occupy center stage.This behavior of the media has been mentioned many times before, and many believe that the tens of millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity provided to Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign contributed to his winning the election.It is now 2023 and we are facing an election that could well decide the future of America. I am therefore requesting that The Times stop paying so much attention to Mr. Trump (we’ve heard everything he has to say many times before) effective immediately.David SommersKensington, Md.To the Editor:I felt a real jolt seeing the photo of former President Donald Trump seated at the table in a Manhattan courtroom. It was the jolt of the norms of American justice falling back into alignment.Christopher HermanWashington‘A Great Day for Liberals’ in Wisconsin and ChicagoJanet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, during her election night party in Milwaukee on Tuesday. She ran on her open support of abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers” (news article, April 5):While New York and the nation were fixated on the circus that was Donald Trump’s arraignment, a special election was held in Wisconsin that decided whether conservatives or liberals would control that state’s Supreme Court. Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, won the race and gave liberals control of the highest court in Wisconsin.Wisconsin is an important swing state, and this new balance of power in the court will have dramatic effects on abortion rights, potential election interference and how election districts are drawn. Conservatives, who have had control of the Supreme Court, will no longer be able to gerrymander voting districts to favor Republicans, nor will they be able to successfully challenge the results of a free and fair election.While this is only one state, we may see similar results in other swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and, yes, even Texas. Donald Trump is to Democrats the gift that just keeps on giving.Henry A. LowensteinNew YorkTo the Editor:Three news stories from your newspaper indicate that Tuesday was a great day for liberals and progressives: “Trump Charged With 34 Felonies,” “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers” and “Rejecting a ‘Republican in Disguise,’ Chicago Voters Elect Johnson as Next Mayor.”While conservative Republicans are obsessed with culture wars and MAGA, progressives are making political headway. Let’s hope that we continue on this march to liberalism till our nation is free from prejudices, curbs on reproductive and gender freedoms, relentless gun-related violence, etc.Michael HadjiargyrouCenterport, N.Y.A Renewed Interest in Freudian Psychoanalysis Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Back to the Couch With Freud” (Sunday Styles, March 26):It is true that people “see what they want in Freud.” Thus, a younger generation might think Freud “gay friendly” because a 1935 letter declared, “Homosexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation.”However, the article omits that Freud went on to describe homosexuality in that same letter as an “arrest of sexual development.”Freud’s theory that gay people suffered from psychological stunted growth rationalized many decades of discrimination in which openly gay men and women were refused psychoanalytic training because they were “developmentally arrested.” Only in 1991 did the American Psychoanalytic Association change its policies refusing admission to gay candidates.I am glad that Freud is having a renaissance. However, any reading or interpretation of his work should not ignore the historical context in which he lived and the ways, for better or worse, in which some of his theories have been used to discriminate.Jack DrescherNew YorkThe writer, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, is the author of “Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man.”To the Editor:I was pleased to see New York Times coverage of the “Freudaissance,” which I have been a joyful participant in for more than a decade now, both personally and professionally.One of the understandings I have come to, having spent countless hours on both sides of the proverbial couch, in both psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral contexts, is that these two approaches do not really diverge from each other as much as many tend to assume that they do.I see the C.B.T. founder Aaron Beck’s three levels of cognition (automatic thoughts, core beliefs and cognitive schemas) mapping neatly onto Freud’s topographical model of the mind (the conscious, preconscious and unconscious, respectively).And I see the dialectic behavioral therapy founder Marsha Linehan’s construct of the “wise mind” as an integration of the rational and emotional minds matching Freud’s structural model of the ego as a synthesis of superego and id.Different terms resonate differently in different generations and with different individuals, but rather than disproving or undermining Freud’s theories, I see today’s evidence-based approaches as indications that the father of modern psychology was apparently onto something more than a century ago.Rachel N. WynerWest Hempstead, N.Y.The writer is a clinical psychologist. More

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      Rejecting a ‘Republican in Disguise,’ Chicago Voters Elect Johnson as Next Mayor

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      In a largely liberal city, Chicago voters chose Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and union organizer, over Paul Vallas, who took a hard line on crime.CHICAGO — Rufus Burns, a 73-year-old resident of Chicago’s West Side, voted for Brandon Johnson for Chicago mayor on Tuesday. But it was really more of a vote against Paul Vallas.“A Republican in disguise,” he said of Mr. Vallas.Ever since the resurfacing of a television interview from 2009 — during which Mr. Vallas called himself “more of a Republican than a Democrat” — many Chicagoans in this overwhelmingly Democratic city have doubted whether Mr. Vallas, a former schools executive, was really the Democrat that he more recently claimed to be.Mr. Johnson, a county commissioner with more liberal policies on education, housing and policing, won the mayoral election in a close race, according to a projection by The Associated Press. At the polls on Tuesday, some voters said that as they considered the choice between Mr. Johnson, 47, and Mr. Vallas, 69, they were largely swayed by a sense that Mr. Johnson was the true progressive in the race.“It was pretty obvious for me,” said Annie Wang, 22, a business analyst who lives in the South Loop. “Johnson is the much more progressive candidate. Vallas was closer to the Republican Party. That made all the difference.”Carmen Moore, a schoolteacher who lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side, said that she cast a ballot for Mr. Johnson because she felt he would be a better agent for addressing systemic issues on the South and West Sides of the city. Then, she added, there was that clip from Mr. Vallas’s television interview, which began playing as a campaign ad in early February.“That kind of got me from the beginning,” she said. “That was one thing that stuck out for me.”In Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side, Richard Strier, a retired professor of English literature at the University of Chicago, said he was worried that Mr. Vallas was a closet Republican.“Vallas makes me nervous,” he said. “I’m basically voting against Vallas for someone who is more progressive.”Mr. Vallas pitched himself to a voters as a tough-on-crime technocrat who would hire thousands more police officers and make the city safer than it has been since the pandemic, when shootings and homicides spiked. But he also spent much of the campaign trying to convince voters that he was a devoted Democrat.On the campaign trail, he cited support from Black leaders, including Jesse White, the former Illinois secretary of state, and surrounded himself with Democratic City Council members who lined up behind him at events and vouched for his credibility and experience.Voting at Beard Elementary School on Tuesday.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesPaul Vallas, lower right, speaks with reporters at Manny’s Deli on election day.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesOne major obstacle for Mr. Vallas among liberal voters was his early endorsement by the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, a union representing rank-and-file officers whose leader, John Catanzara, has alienated many Chicagoans with strident hard right positions. (Mr. Catanzara, for example, defended the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then apologized.)Kristen Lopez, 30, a graduate student on the South Side, said on Tuesday that when she learned that Mr. Vallas was endorsed by the police union, she knew who would get her vote for mayor: Mr. Johnson.“That made my choice for me,” she said.Crime was one of Ms. Lopez’s general concerns, she said, but she also cared about issues like gentrification and affordable housing — and rejected Mr. Vallas’s notion of adding more police officers to the force.“Obviously, giving the police more power hasn’t worked so far,” she said. But for some voters, it was Mr. Vallas’s more conservative policies, especially on crime and policing, that drew them to him.Brad Walker, 44, who lives on the city’s North Side, described himself as an independent who is liberal on social issues, but a strong proponent of gun rights and financial responsibility.He voted for Mr. Vallas because progressives “have been very weak” on rising crime in Chicago, he said.“The one thing Chicago was known for was its cleanliness and safety,” he said. “If you’re going to be in the city and pay high taxes, you want to feel safe.”As he cast a vote in downtown Chicago, Daniel Lancaster, 37, an engineer who lives in Roscoe Village, a neighborhood on the North Side, said that he saw the two candidates as far apart politically. Mr. Johnson was “the Bernie Democrat,” he said, noting his endorsement by the progressive Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.“For me, it was more of a vote for an ideal,” he said.Voting for Mr. Johnson was riskier, Mr. Lancaster conceded. His proposals for solving crime were more long term than Mr. Vallas’s, with calls to invest more deeply in education and affordable housing.“There’s a lot of political theory behind it, but it’s going to take more time,” he said.Brandon Johnson holds his I VOTED card outside the Lorraine Hansberry Apartments polling site.Jim Vondruska for The New York TimesIn the Far North Side neighborhood of Rogers Park, on the shore of Lake Michigan, Cal Graham, 62, said he took Mr. Vallas’s years-ago description of himself as a Republican seriously.“He said he was,” Mr. Graham said.But Mr. Graham said that he remains unsure if Mr. Johnson is better equipped to handle the crime problem in Chicago.“I don’t know until one of them gets in office,” he said. “That’s the only way you can tell. They all have ideas but nobody has the solution.”For Kevin Yahampath, 23, a business analyst, choosing between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Vallas required a last-minute gut check. Before he headed into a polling station in the Loop late Tuesday afternoon, he logged onto an online quiz on the Chicago Sun-Times website, designed to help voters see which candidate aligned with their politics.The quiz told Mr. Yahampath that he was a Johnson voter.“I kind of expected it,” he said. “I knew Vallas was to the right.”Robert Chiarito More

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      Chicagoans Go to the Polls in a Mayoral Race. Here’s What to Know.

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      Paul Vallas, a former public school executive, has called for a crackdown on crime, while Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner, wants to expand social programs.CHICAGO — After rejecting the incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in the first round of balloting in February, Chicago voters were set to choose on Tuesday between two candidates with starkly different visions for the country’s third-largest city.Paul Vallas, a former public schools executive, has run on a more conservative platform, calling for a larger police force, a crackdown on crime and more charter schools. His opponent, Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and union organizer, has campaigned as a proud progressive who wants to expand social programs, spend more on neighborhood schools and add new taxes.The runoff election comes as Chicago fights to regain its prepandemic swagger. In recent years, the city has been confronted by rising crime rates, an emptier downtown and census estimates showing a loss of residents. Ms. Lightfoot, who missed the runoff after receiving only 17 percent of the vote in February, presided over two teacher work stoppages and civil unrest during her single term in City Hall, leaving many voters frustrated and frightened.“This city needs a lot — it needs safety,” said Shermane Thompson, who voted for Mr. Johnson and said she was scared to let her 9-year-old son play outside. “Jobs, mental health — it’s a lot of things that need to be done. But I want it to be done in a way that is long-lasting and that works for everyone, not just for select people.”The election in Chicago is the latest race in a large, liberal American city in which crime has been a primary issue. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former police captain, defeated progressive candidates in his party’s 2021 mayoral primary by calling for a crackdown on crime. And in Los Angeles last year, Karen Bass, a liberal congresswoman, was elected mayor in a race in which her more conservative opponent, Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer, ran on a law-and-order message.Mr. Vallas, 69, made public safety the focus of his campaign, calling for tougher prosecutions of minor offenses and a rapid expansion of the Chicago Police Department, which is operating under a consent decree in federal court and without a permanent superintendent. That platform helped Mr. Vallas finish in first place in the first round of the election in February, though well short of the outright majority he would have needed to clinch the job without a runoff.In a heavily Democratic city, Mr. Vallas has faced criticism for past comments that he considered himself to be more of a Republican than a Democrat, and for an endorsement from the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, whose leaders frequently use brash rhetoric and support Republican politicians. Still, his description of Chicago as a city in crisis and his pledge to get crime under control resonated with many voters.“I’m tired of looking out my window and watching drive-by shootings,” said Sherri Ortiz, a West Side resident who said this week that she was leaning toward Mr. Vallas, who she believed was more likely to fix things quickly.Mr. Johnson, 47, qualified for the runoff by defeating several better-known candidates competing for the same liberal voters. A former social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson has spent the last dozen years as an employee of the Chicago Teachers Union, a powerful but polarizing political force that contributed heavily to his campaign. In recent weeks, he has described a public safety vision that goes beyond law enforcement, but has tried to distance himself from past support for defunding the police.In a West Side campaign stop on Monday, Mr. Johnson pitched an upbeat vision for the city, saying “a better, safer Chicago is possible if we actually invest in people.”“We deserve to have a leader that’s prepared to bring people together,” he said, “and that’s what my candidacy reflects.”Earlier on Monday, outside a South Side doughnut shop in the neighborhood where he grew up, Mr. Vallas said his record leading “institutions in crisis” made him the right candidate for the moment.“It’s about leadership, it’s about somebody with the experience,” said Mr. Vallas, who led the school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans, and was surrounded by Black politicians who had endorsed him.Race has often played a role in elections in Chicago, which has roughly equal numbers of white, Black and Hispanic residents. Mr. Vallas, who is white, made it to the runoff with strong support in the city’s downtown and in majority white areas of the Northwest and Southwest Sides, where many municipal workers live. Mr. Johnson, who is Black, performed well along the city’s northern lakefront, home to many white progressives, and in predominantly Hispanic areas northwest of downtown.With polls suggesting a tight race, both candidates touted support from Black and Hispanic politicians as they sought to win over voters who supported Ms. Lightfoot or Representative Jesús G. García, another mayoral candidate, in the first round of balloting.Whoever wins the election, it will mark a decisive shift from the policies of Ms. Lightfoot, with Mr. Vallas running to her political right and Mr. Johnson well to her left.Four years ago, Ms. Lightfoot, also a Democrat, carried all 50 wards in the runoff election, becoming the first Black woman and first gay person to serve as Chicago’s mayor. But her tenure was bumpy from the start. Soon after she took office, the teachers’ union went on strike. And after less than a year in office, the coronavirus pandemic upended every aspect of daily life. As the virus spread, the Loop business district emptied out and homicides rose to generational highs.On the campaign trail this year, Ms. Lightfoot emphasized investments in long-neglected parts of the South and West Sides and noted that homicide rates, though still higher than before the pandemic, had started to decline. Voters, however, decided to move on.Michael Gerstein More

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      Democrats Run on Abortion, Even for Offices With Little Say on the Issue

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      GREEN BAY, Wis. — Eric Genrich is running a full-throated campaign in support of abortion rights, reminding voters of his position at every turn and hammering his anti-abortion opponent in television ads. At a recent event, he featured an obstetrician who now commutes to a state where abortion is legal to treat patients and a local woman who traveled to Colorado to terminate a nonviable pregnancy.There’s just one inconvenient reality: Mr. Genrich is running for re-election as mayor of Green Bay, Wis., an office that has nothing to do with abortion policy.Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, putting back into effect a Wisconsin law from 1849 that bans nearly all abortions, the city did not have a clinic that performed the procedure, nor a health department that regulated it.Mr. Genrich is one of several candidates for municipal offices on the ballot this spring in races in Wisconsin, Chicago, St. Louis, Lincoln, Neb., and elsewhere who are making their support for abortion rights — and often their opponent’s past opposition — a centerpiece of their campaigns, even though abortion policy in all of these places is decided at the state level.Mayor Eric Genrich of Green Bay, Wis., left, has made abortion rights central to his re-election campaign. At a recent news conference, one speaker was Dr. Anna Igler, second from right, a Wisconsin obstetrician-gynecologist who traveled to Colorado for an abortion because her fetus had a severe abnormality.Kayla Wolf for The New York TimesDemocrats used a muscular defense of abortion rights to great success in the midterm elections last fall, and, if that strategy works again, they are likely to copy it next year in races at all levels of government, including in President Biden’s campaign if he seeks re-election.The focus on abortion rights in down-ballot races, however, reflects Democrats’ increased nationalization of local politics. For decades, local Republican candidates ran on issues like abortion, immigration and national security, putting them in simple terms: “A noun, a verb and 9/11,” Mr. Biden once said in describing the phenomenon.Now Democrats are doing the same on abortion in left-leaning cities, hoping to win over independent voters and some moderate Republicans.Doing so allows Democrats to avoid discussing crime rates or other less appealing campaign topics. But beyond that, they recognize and emphasize that in today’s tribal politics, the precise responsibilities of an office matter less than sending a strong signal to voters about one’s broader political loyalties.“It’s definitely not a municipal issue per se,” Mr. Genrich said in an interview. “Voters don’t care about some of these parochial distinctions between municipal boundaries. This is a city issue, a state issue, a federal issue. Some of their most important questions are, what do you stand for fundamentally?”Mr. Genrich declined repeated opportunities to explain what, precisely, the mayor of Green Bay could do about abortion in his city.Still, Republicans running for mayor find themselves doing a political tap dance, trying to de-emphasize but not disavow their opposition to abortion rights, which is not an electoral winner in Democratic cities. In Green Bay, Mr. Biden won 53 percent of the vote in 2020; last year, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, took 55 percent of the city’s vote.Mr. Genrich’s opponent in Tuesday’s officially nonpartisan election, Chad Weininger, is a former state legislator who cast a series of votes to restrict abortion rights before last year’s Supreme Court ruling. Now, as television ads and campaign mail blast his stance and label him “MAGA Chad” to emphasize his Republican politics, he is trying to change the subject.Chad Weininger, who is running for mayor against Mr. Genrich in Green Bay, is a former state legislator who has opposed abortion rights in the past. Kayla Wolf for The New York Times“I’m running for mayor, I’m not debating abortion,” Mr. Weininger said. “We could have discussions about nuclear arms, but guess what? Can’t do anything about it. We can have discussions about securing our borders, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”National Democratic organizations that do not typically involve themselves in local elections are using abortion policy to promote and raise money for candidates who back abortion rights.Emily’s List, a group that backs women who support abortion rights, has endorsed mayoral candidates in Jacksonville, Fla., Madison, Wis., and Lincoln, Neb.In Lincoln, where Mr. Biden won 54 percent of the vote in 2020, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat, said her constituents had demanded to know what she could do about proposed legislation in the Nebraska Legislature that would restrict abortion rights. Her answer: speak out against the bills.Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird of Lincoln, Neb., has urged constituents to speak out in favor of abortion rights. Madeline Cass for The New York TimesVoters, Ms. Gaylor Baird said, are “much more interested in knowing where people stand. So I expect that people will want to know where I stand on this issue, even if it isn’t a local issue typically.”Her main opponent, Suzanne Geist, a Republican state senator who has sponsored bills to restrict or ban abortion in Nebraska, said her actions in the State Capitol should have little bearing on how she would run the state’s capital city. She said she would prefer to focus on issues like public safety and the health of the city’s business community.Talking about abortion, Ms. Geist said, is “a way of avoiding what the present issues are and trying to get the public wrapped around something that really has nothing to do with the mayor’s office or the mayor’s race.”Suzanne Geist, a Republican state senator running for mayor of Lincoln, Neb., said that talking about abortion was “a way of avoiding what the present issues are and trying to get the public wrapped around something that really has nothing to do with the mayor’s office or the mayor’s race.”Madeline Cass for The New York TimesPast opposition to some abortion rights has become a political liability even for candidates who support them now. In Chicago, Paul Vallas, the former Chicago Public Schools chief executive who is running for mayor, is being attacked by his more liberal opponent, Brandon Johnson, for a 2009 television interview in which Mr. Vallas said, “Fundamentally, I oppose abortion.”Mr. Vallas’s statement, which he made when he being asked about possibly running for state office as a Republican, came after he had declared himself “personally pro-choice” but said he would favor banning some late-term abortions.Mr. Johnson is now broadcasting ads with a clip of Mr. Vallas’s statement that he opposed abortion; Mr. Vallas has responded with advertising declaring that he supports abortion rights.In an interview on Sunday at a Greek restaurant, Mr. Vallas said Mr. Johnson had taken his past abortion comments out of context.“It’s had some impact,” he acknowledged.In other races, municipal candidates are trying to find ways to make their cities have some influence over abortion access.Daniela Velázquez, a public relations executive running for the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, has proposed providing money for women seeking abortions to travel across the Mississippi River to Illinois, where the procedure remains legal. While abortion became illegal in Missouri after the Supreme Court’s decision, Ms. Velázquez said many in St. Louis supported abortion rights.“I have been knocking on doors and people have looked at our lit and been like, ‘Oh, you know, pro-choice,’” she said. “Then they say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to vote for you.’”Democrats are open in their belief at the current moment, the best way to win votes is to focus on the abortion fight.“Abortion and reproductive rights is the No. 1 issue in 2023,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to back Mr. Genrich in Green Bay and Mayor Cory Mason in Racine, who is making similar arguments there. “It’s the No. 1 issue that moves voters that normally vote Republican to vote for someone else and it’s the No. 1 issue to get Democrats off the couch and casting ballots.”Beyond the Green Bay mayoral election, abortion is a major issue in Wisconsin’s race for the State Supreme Court, which will finish on Tuesday and is likely to decide whether the procedure remains illegal in the state. Kayla Wolf for The New York TimesIn November, Racine asked voters on the midterm-election ballot if Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban should be repealed — and 71 percent said yes. Mr. Mason is now running television ads highlighting his stance in favor of abortion rights and attacking his opponent.Abortion, Mr. Mason said, comes up in his discussions with voters as much as snow plowing, public safety and housing.“These two big issues around freedom, the freedom to vote and the freedom to make your own health care decisions, they are every bit as front and center in this race as anything else that we deal with at the municipal level,” Mr. Mason said.Mr. Mason’s opponent, Henry Perez, a Republican city alderman opposed to abortion rights, said voters in Racine did not care much about the issue. He said that he did not remember how he had voted in the November abortion referendum, and that too much fuss was being made over abortion being banned in Racine when it was available across the state line in Illinois, roughly 25 miles south of the city.“A lot of people I’ve talked to say, ‘Henry, abortion, really?’” Mr. Perez said. “What do we care about it here? I mean, it’s not a thing that we do. And there’s always options like going out of town, you know, or going over to the next state to take care of an abortion if they need to.”Mitch Smith More

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      Chicagoans Are Picking a Mayor. Here’s What Matters From 4 Key Wards.

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      CHICAGO — Chicago is known as a city of neighborhoods, a sprawling metropolis divided into distinctive pockets defined by their own architecture, restaurants, languages, ballparks and beaches.But this is a heated election season, so Chicagoans are temporarily dissecting the city in a more political parlance: the mathematics of wards.There are 50 wards in all, each represented by a member in the City Council, and each with its own identity. The political winds can shift with every mayoral contest: In a runoff election in 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot won all 50, but in her unsuccessful February bid for re-election amid a crowded field of challengers, she took only 16. Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, the top two finishers in February, are spending the final days before their runoff on Tuesday crisscrossing the city campaigning for votes. More