Johnson, Brandon (Chicago, Ill, Politician)

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    Chicago Voters Reject Real Estate Tax Change to Fund Homeless Programs

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    The referendum, backed by progressives but criticized by the real estate industry, called for raising transfer taxes on properties that sell for more than $1 million.Chicago voters rejected an increase to the city’s transfer tax on high-value properties in a Tuesday referendum, The Associated Press said, leaving unfulfilled a longtime goal of Mayor Brandon Johnson and progressive Democrats who wanted to use new revenue to address homelessness in the country’s third-largest city.The result came after days of counting ballots, including mail-in votes, that were not able to be reported on Election Day.Real estate groups had warned that the new rates would have been a potentially catastrophic blow to the downtown office market, which was already losing value and struggling with vacancies.The vote came at an uncertain political moment in Chicago, a Democrat-dominated city where homelessness has become more visible since the pandemic and an influx of migrants has strained resources. And the result raised questions about the strength of the city’s progressive movement, led by Mr. Johnson, which has become the dominant force in City Hall over the last decade and which mobilized its army of volunteers to knock on doors in support of the tax change.“Yes, it is a loss for Mayor Johnson and is a loss for the progressive movement,” said Dick W. Simpson, a former Chicago City Council member and an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who campaigned for the tax change.The referendum called for raising transfer taxes on properties that sell for more than $1 million while lowering that rate on properties that sell for less. Supporters described it as a chance to level the playing field and help the city’s most vulnerable residents. Some referred to it as a “mansion tax,” versions of which have been approved by voters in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, N.M.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chicago-Area Races Test Progressive Strength

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      Two local races in the Chicago area on Tuesday will gauge voters’ enthusiasm for progressive causes in an Illinois primary that lacks drama at the top of the ticket.Progressive Democrats, who have built political strength in Chicago over the last decade but received mixed reviews for their governance, are pushing for a change to the city’s real estate transfer tax that would raise rates on high-value properties to fund homelessness programs.Progressives are also trying to hold onto the Cook County prosecutor’s office as the incumbent, Kim Foxx, who overhauled systems but faced criticism, prepares to leave office after two terms.The contests have sparked debates about Chicago’s post-pandemic struggles with homelessness, crime and empty downtown office space, and the races will give voters a chance to weigh in on the direction of the city under Ms. Foxx and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a fellow progressive who was elected last year.With the major party presidential nominations already settled, the results in Chicago, which is dominated by Democrats, could come down to whether progressives or moderates have more success turning out voters.The proposed tax change, which opponents say would be a major blow to the struggling commercial real estate sector, calls for reducing the transfer rate on properties that sell for less than $1 million, and imposing higher rates on homes and commercial buildings that sell for more than $1 million.The extra money — supporters say it would be at least $100 million each year — would be put toward addressing homelessness, with the details of that spending to be finalized later. The City Council would still have to enact the new tax rates. Mr. Johnson, a former union organizer, supports the ballot measure and made it part of his campaign platform.Democratic voters in Chicago and its inner-ring suburbs will also choose between two candidates vying to succeed Ms. Foxx, who brought promised changes to the local justice system but also faced criticism for persistently high crime rates and her handling of a case involving the actor Jussie Smollett.Clayton Harris III, a university lecturer and former prosecutor, has consolidated support from progressive politicians. His opponent, Eileen O’Neill Burke, a retired appellate judge, is trying to win the nomination by appealing to moderate and conservative voters.The winner of the primary will face a Republican in November, but countywide partisan races are rarely competitive. More

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      What Chicago’s New Mayor Says About the City’s Biggest Challenges

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      It wasn’t long ago that Brandon Johnson, 47, was a county commissioner and teachers’ union organizer, unknown to many Chicagoans. On Monday he will be sworn in as the city’s 57th mayor.Mr. Johnson’s rapid ascent from political obscurity to the helm of America’s third-largest city was fueled by an unapologetically progressive platform, a gift for retail campaigning, and enthusiastic support and money from organized labor. He knocked out the incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in the first round of balloting in February, then beat Paul Vallas, a far more conservative and well-funded Democrat, in the runoff last month.Now comes the hard part.Mr. Johnson inherits a proud city that has not fully emerged from its pandemic funk. Chicago’s downtown is emptier, its public schools have fewer students, and crime rates remain far higher than before the pandemic.In an interview last week at his transition office along the Chicago River, Mr. Johnson said he was cleareyed about the scope of the challenges awaiting him but confident about the city’s trajectory.Here are some of the biggest issues facing Chicago, and what he had to say about them:The city needs a new police superintendent.“It’s important that the city of Chicago has confidence in the superintendent. That’s someone who understands constitutional policing, but someone who also understands that public safety is an overall goal that cannot be confined to policing.”The superintendent selected by Ms. Lightfoot, David Brown, resigned after she lost re-election, leaving the embattled Chicago Police Department under interim leadership. Mr. Johnson, who before running for mayor expressed support for removing some law enforcement funding, will soon have to select a permanent superintendent.Mr. Johnson said he would seek someone who understands Chicago and could earn the trust of rank-and-file officers, but also someone who shared his view of policing as just one part of a broader safety strategy. He said the new superintendent must be willing to work with newly elected councils of residents created to provide feedback and to make suggestions on law enforcement in each of the city’s police districts.Migrants at a police district in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood this month.Sebastian Hidalgo for The New York TimesChicago has struggled to house an influx of migrants.“We are a sanctuary city. There’s an incredible history of the city of Chicago being a welcoming space for families across the country and across the world.”Mr. Johnson inherits an escalating crisis: the increasingly large stream of Venezuelans and other migrants arriving by bus and plane from border states and seeking shelter in Chicago. In the last several weeks, the number of migrants entering Chicago has multiplied, filling city shelters and overwhelming police stations, where migrants have been dropped off. With the lifting last week of Title 42, a federal policy that allowed the United States to expel many people who crossed the southern border before they could apply for asylum, even more migrants are expected to flow into Chicago.The influx is both a problem and an opportunity for Chicago, a city that grew in population from 2010 to 2020, but then saw those gains erased during the pandemic, when thousands of residents moved out. Mr. Johnson said that he intended to help welcome the migrants, but said that he also wanted to make sure that Black families who have been in the city for decades are not cut out from city resources.Public education presents a formidable test.“There’s no greater institution to transform in this moment. Our public school system has to be transformed.”A former social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson most recently worked as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, a progressive and politically powerful organization that engaged in repeated work stoppages during his tenure and was a chief antagonist of the most recent two mayors.Mr. Johnson has spoken repeatedly of investing in neighborhood schools as a way to address the city’s broader challenges. He said he envisioned “an education system that exposes our children to as many industries as possible in a real, tangible way,” with a far greater focus on connecting high school graduates with career opportunities, including in trades that do not require a college degree.Mr. Johnson answering a question from a high school student at a mayoral forum in February.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDowntown still lacks its prepandemic swagger.“I believe it’s a unique opportunity for this generation to set a course that could be studied a century from now.”Downtown is not going to look the same as it did before the pandemic, Mr. Johnson said. But precisely what it will become is less clear.Mr. Johnson said he sees a chance to build on existing industries, especially in the life sciences, a sector that has seen recent growth. During his mayoral transition, Mr. Johnson has met with business and civic leaders downtown, a group that largely supported his opponent, Mr. Vallas.And Mr. Johnson will be the face of the city during one of its newest and most divisive events: a NASCAR street race downtown this summer. Mr. Johnson said that he intends to carry out the new car racing event with “care and sensitivity,” but also hopes to build on the slate of more established festivals and activities the city offers, especially those that appeal to younger people.Public safety remains a huge concern.“Do you know what safe communities do all over the country? You know what they do? They invest in people.”Mr. Johnson spoke on the campaign trail of making deep investments in communities that have seen the most violent crime, especially on the South Side and the West Side, where he lives. People will feel safer, he said, when they have strong neighborhood schools, low unemployment and access to mental health services.Those goals feel long term, but Mr. Johnson also says he hopes to make immediate changes like doubling the number of young people who have work after school and in the summer. More

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      Democratic Convention Gives Chicago, Staggered by Pandemic, a Chance to Shine

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      Republicans have cast Chicago as a metropolis of crime and dysfunction, but with the 2024 Democratic convention, Chicagoans are eager to prove them wrong.CHICAGO — Word had just leaked Tuesday that the Democratic Party had chosen the nation’s third-largest city for its 2024 national convention when Republicans began trotting out warnings about crime infestations and the necessity of bulletproof vests.But no political trash talk seemed to dampen the excitement of a metropolis less in need of a pick-me-up than a little validation for the comeback it is sure is coming.“It’s definitely a shot in the arm to the city,” said Sam Toia, a longtime Chicago booster and the president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, adding, “We are a world-class city,” an oft-used phrase here that projects Chicagoans’ time-honored self-doubt.It would be dishonest to say Chicago, which last hosted the Democratic convention in 1996, has recovered all of its swagger since the coronavirus laid it low. Then-President Donald J. Trump was already denouncing Chicago as some sort of national embarrassment even before the virus reached American shores. Its violent crime, though receding from its post-pandemic high by some measures, is still “a cancer that’s eating the soul of this city,” said Arne Duncan, a former secretary of education whose new venture addresses violence in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods.Hotel and retail traffic is back to 85 percent of 2019 levels while public transit is at 73 percent, according to the Chicago Loop Alliance. But Chicago’s downtown late last year was only at half the activity it hosted before the pandemic, 48th among the 62 North American cities the University of Toronto measured.Brandon Johnson campaigning with supporters in February in Chicago, before his eventual victory.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe surprise mayoral triumph last week of a young, untested liberal, Brandon Johnson, has brought with it a nervous excitement — the hope of a fresh face but the worry that comes with inexperience. Still, with the sun out, temperatures in the 70s and the summer festival season on its way, Chicagoans were already feeling optimistic. “It gives us an opportunity to feature the best of the best, in a space where there is a lot of energy and a lot of hope,” said Representative Delia Ramirez, a progressive in her first term in Congress from Chicago’s near northwest side. “This is a truly new day, with a brand-new mayor-elect, the youngest, most progressive, most diverse City Council ever, our first Latina in Congress — it’s a magical place and it’s ready.”Chicago beat out its biggest competitor, Atlanta, with three basic appeals. It’s in a state with a Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, who also happens to be a billionaire with deep and wide-open pockets. It has powerful unions who pressed the pro-labor occupant of the White House to choose a city with unionized hotels, unionized convention and entertainment sites and unionized restaurants. And it’s in a state whose progressive policies contrasted sharply with Georgia’s abortion ban, open-carry gun law and “right-to-work” labor requirements.Chicago’s proximity to the “Blue Wall” states that President Biden will need for his re-election — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — may have been a factor, but Georgia is no less important a swing state in 2024. The people who made the pitch were far more intent on emphasizing that no conventioneers would have to cross picket lines to crawl into their nonunion hotel beds or deal with openly armed protesters.“Illinois really does represent the values of the Democratic Party, from A to Z, especially the labor piece,” said Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor.Mr. Johnson’s victory was something of a bonus, along with the landslide election last week of a liberal judge to Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court, just to the north.“Chicago had the clear advantage of a Democratic governor, a governor who was intimately involved in the bid and also a political race where a progressive Democrat just won a really tough race,” said Shirley Franklin, a former Atlanta mayor who was part of the public campaign to bring the convention to the South.Had Mr. Johnson’s much more conservative rival, Paul Vallas, prevailed, Democratic Party officials would have had to figure out how — or whether — to embrace a mayor whom many of them had spent months painting as a secret Republican who used fear tactics and crime to garner support from Chicago-area Republicans.Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois was instrumental in bringing the Democrats’ convention to Chicago.Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesThe city’s liberal leaders hope convention organizers will elevate Mr. Johnson, as they try to energize young voters who have been supercharged by issues like abortion and guns but have not quite warmed to their octogenarian president.“Democrats need to show that we have people on the mic, front and center, that excite people, that unite people and give them hope that we can come together,” Ms. Ramirez said.Party officials are unsure what role the new mayor might play at the convention. Mr. Johnson may not have all the internal party baggage that Mr. Vallas had, but he did openly discuss “defunding” the police during the civil rights protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. More than a year before the actual convention, Republicans are already latching onto Chicago’s reputation for criminal violence and political dysfunction.“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?” quipped Will Reinert, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.The right-wing website Breitbart blared, “Democrats Choose Chicago, America’s Murder Capital.”Jeffrey Blehar, a Chicago-based contributor for the conservative National Review, predicted, “Democratic conventioneers are in for an entirely new experience in either highly militarized downtown security or exciting street-crime adventure.”If, by the summer of 2024, crime rates are improving and Chicago’s police force is amply funded, Mr. Johnson may well be center stage. If trends go otherwise, he may not be.What is clear, city boosters say, is that Chicago will be ready, with Michelin-starred restaurants within walking distance of the arena, gracious hotels scrubbed of their pandemic dust and city residents eager to prove their detractors wrong.“Are there things we need to snap into place post-pandemic? Sure,” Mr. Reiter said. “This event helps us clinch that.” Maya King More

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      Three Takeaways From a Tumultuous Day in Politics

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      A blowout in Wisconsin, an indictment in New York and a progressive victory in Chicago.Supporters of the victorious Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. Abortion was a key issue. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt has been a big — even historic — week in American politics. Donald J. Trump was indicted. The liberal candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz, easily prevailed over a conservative, Daniel Kelly. And Brandon Johnson, a progressive, was elected the mayor of Chicago.What did we learn? While in some cases it’s too soon to say much, here are a few early takeaways:It’s still 2022, at least in WisconsinIf the 2022 midterm elections offered any lesson, it was that liberals excel when abortion and democracy are on the ballot. Liberal voters turn out en masse. A crucial sliver of voters — perhaps as few as one in every 30 or 40 — will flip to vote for the Democrat when they otherwise would have voted Republican.That pattern continued in Wisconsin on Tuesday, when the liberal candidate won by 11 points, a striking margin for Wisconsin. Like many of the best Democratic showings of 2022, the Wisconsin race seemed likely to decide the fate of the state’s abortion ban and its gerrymandered legislative maps.Interestingly, Wisconsin was not a state where Democrats excelled last November. They didn’t fare poorly, but Senator Ron Johnson still won re-election and the incumbent Democratic governor won by just three points. The 2022 showing was no Democratic romp like in Pennsylvania or Michigan, where a stop-the-steal candidate or abortion referendum helped Democrats.This time, the issues facing Wisconsin voters were more like those in Michigan and Pennsylvania. As a result, Wisconsin liberals won a Pennsylvania-like and Michigan-like landslide.Too early to tell on Trump, but a short-term bumpIt’s still far too soon to say how the indictment of Mr. Trump will play out. But there are already plenty of signs that he has gained among Republican primary voters since last Thursday, when news of the indictment broke. Indeed, all four polls taken over this period showed Mr. Trump gaining compared with their previous survey.We’ll probably return to this question in more depth next week. After all, none of these polls were taken after his flight to New York or his surrender to authorities in Manhattan. And he was already gaining before the news of his indictment, so it’s hard to distinguish his latest gains from the continuation of a longer-term trend.Still, it would be no surprise if Mr. Trump is benefiting from the indictment. For days, the conservative media ecosystem has been dominated by a chorus of his defenders, including none other than his chief rival, Ron DeSantis. This is about as favorable of a media environment as it gets for a Republican primary candidate.How this will play over the longer term — especially if Mr. Trump faces other indictments — remains to be seen.Brandon Johnson, a progressive, as he concluded his victory speech on Tuesday in Chicago.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesBlack voters are the fulcrum of a divided Democratic electorateThe Chicago mayoral race wasn’t a Democratic primary, but it was about as close as it gets for a general election: Both candidates were Democrats, and 82 percent of Chicago voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Like many Democratic primaries over the last decade, it pitted an activist-backed progressive against a more moderate candidate.But while we’ve grown accustomed to victories for moderate Democrats in most of these intra-primary fights, in Chicago it was the progressive candidate Brandon Johnson who prevailed. That’s in no small part thanks to the backing of Black voters, who have often offered decisive support to high-profile establishment-backed candidates, from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to Eric Adams.With many examples of Black voters backing moderate candidates over the years, it can be tempting to assume that they are the reliable moderate allies of the establishment. In reality, it’s not so simple. In particular, Black voters have often backed Black progressives over white moderates and liberals.In the New York mayoral race, Black voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Adams over the liberal Kathryn Garcia, even though they also preferred the Black progressive Maya Wiley over Ms. Garcia, based on data from ranked choice balloting. When Black voters side with progressives, the establishment’s position suddenly looks a lot weaker: Black voters represent around 20 percent of Democratic voters.Mr. Johnson, who is Black, routinely won 80 percent of the vote in the South Side’s majority Black wards, helping him squeak past the moderate Paul Vallas, who won a lot of the rest of the city.Mr. Johnson’s success doesn’t necessarily mean that Black Democrats are feeling the Bern, or otherwise itching to support progressive candidates. In this year’s primary, Mr. Johnson fared best in relatively young and white progressive areas on Chicago’s North Side, while the incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, carried the South Side wards where Mr. Johnson would dominate just a month later.But the importance of Black voters to progressive fortunes might offer a lesson for activists who hope one of their own might win a Democratic presidential primary.After all, the last candidate to beat the Democratic establishment in such a Democratic primary was none other than Barack Obama. More

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      The Power and Limits of Abortion Politics

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      What should we make of the role that abortion played in both the Chicago and Wisconsin elections this week?The elections this week in Chicago and Wisconsin were different in many ways. One was for mayor, the other for a state Supreme Court seat. One was in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, the other in a closely divided swing state.But there was at least one issue — abortion — that was part of both campaigns. And the outcomes of both elections had something in common: The more liberal candidate won.In Wisconsin, abortion dominated the race to fill a pivotal seat on the state Supreme Court, with the winner, Janet Protasiewicz, making clear that she would vote to overturn the state’s abortion ban. She beat Daniel Kelly by 11 percentage points.In Chicago, the issue played a much smaller role, partly because mayors have little control over abortion policy. Still, the winner, Brandon Johnson, used a past statement of personal opposition to abortion by his opponent, Paul Vallas, as part of an argument that Vallas was far too conservative for Chicago. Johnson won by about three percentage points.Together, the elections add to the evidence that abortion can be a potent issue for left-leaning candidates in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s unpopular overturning of Roe v. Wade. Some Democrats have come to see the post-Roe politics of abortion as so favorable that they believe the party should organize its 2024 campaign around the issue, as Rebecca Traister recently described in New York magazine. These Democrats’ argument is as simple as the headline on the magazine’s cover: “Abortion wins elections.”Today, I want to examine that claim, considering the supporting and conflicting evidence. With help from colleagues, I’ll also help you understand the other lessons from Chicago and Wisconsin.‘What happened?’After the Supreme Court overturned Roe last June and allowed states to ban abortion, more than a dozen quickly imposed tight restrictions. Today, abortion is largely illegal in most of red America, even though polls suggest many voters in these states support at least some access.In response, Democratic candidates in Republican-leaning states emphasized abortion in last year’s midterm campaigns. The Democrats saw it as a way to energize liberals and win over swing voters and moderate Republicans:In Georgia, as CNN reported in September, Stacey Abrams had “found an issue to center her campaign around as Election Day approaches: protecting abortion rights in Georgia.” Abrams, a Democrat, was trying to defeat Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican.In Florida, television commercials for Democratic Senate and governor candidates mentioned abortion nearly 28,000 times, according to one estimate.In Ohio and Texas, Democrats also emphasized the issue in statewide races.Democratic donors were hopeful enough about all these races that they poured money into them — and yet the party lost all of them. In some cases, the outcomes were landslides. “Abortion was supposed to be a defining issue for Florida Democrats,” read a headline in The Tampa Bay Times. “What happened?”The answer seems to be that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, but only in some circumstances. When a campaign revolves around the subject — as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did this week and voter referendums in Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan did last year — abortion can win big even in purple or red states. And when abortion serves as a symbol of a candidate’s broader conservatism — as in Chicago, and as some Democrats have used it in other mayoral races — the tactic can also work.But there is not yet evidence that abortion can determine the outcome of most political campaigns. In hotly contested races — for governor, Congress and other offices — most voters make their decisions based on an array of issues. And many Republican voters who support some abortion access are nonetheless willing to support a candidate who does not.In the latest edition of his newsletter, Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, combines abortion with another major issue — democracy — and makes the following argument: “If the 2022 midterm elections offered any lesson, it was that liberals excel when abortion and democracy are on the ballot. Liberal voters turn out en masse. A crucial sliver of voters — perhaps as few as one in every 30 or 40 — will flip to vote for the Democrat when they otherwise would have voted Republican.”My colleague Reid Epstein, who covered the Wisconsin race, put it this way: “The difference in Wisconsin is that voters were playing with live ammunition. The Protasiewicz campaign and Democrats broadly made it clear from the very beginning to voters that she would be the deciding vote to strike down the state’s 1849 abortion law, while the conservative in the race, Daniel Kelly, would be a vote to keep it.”For the other implications of the Wisconsin race, especially for the state’s heavily gerrymandered legislative maps, I recommend Reid’s latest article.More on ChicagoIn Chicago, Johnson offered a playbook for winning an election in a heavily Democratic city as a strong progressive. Johnson ran left in the first round of voting, becoming the favored candidate of liberal activists, and then moved back to the center in the final round (by effectively disavowing his earlier support for defunding the police).He has signaled that as mayor he will pursue a progressive agenda, raising taxes on the rich and on corporations to pay for new services “Johnson talked frequently on the campaign trail about public safety,” Julie Bosman, The Times’s Chicago bureau chief, told me, “but he spoke about it in the larger context of increasing funding for public schools, creating anti-poverty programs and doubling youth employment.”Julie added: “This election tested the limits of the old-fashioned law-and-order message that drove Eric Adams’s win in New York. Voters I talked to at the polls yesterday said they were concerned about crime, but many of them said that they favored Johnson’s approach of building up social programs to fight poverty and violence, rather than trying to flood the streets with more police officers, as Vallas advocated.”For more on Chicago, see Mitch Smith’s story about how Johnson united a coalition of young, Black and progressive voters.Related:Idaho made it illegal to help someone under 18 leave the state to get an abortion without parental consent.“Who would like to watch me slay a zombie?” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, asked before signing legislation repealing Michigan’s abortion ban.Republicans gained a supermajority in North Carolina’s legislature after a Democrat switched parties. It could let them ban abortions.THE LATEST NEWSTrump IndictmentDonald Trump spent nearly an hour inside a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday. Here’s what happened.Trump’s charges bring uncertainty to both parties: Some think the case is flimsy, others that it has the potential to reverberate politically.Some of Trump’s aides acknowledge that the Manhattan case is bad for his campaign.Republicans say they will question Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, about Trump, but the reality is more complicated.From “all a pattern of behavior” to “such nonsense,” four Times Opinion writers assess the indictment.InternationalThese maps show Russia’s gains in Ukraine this year: three small settlements and part of the city of Bakhmut, a battlefield with limited strategic value.Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, are speaking in Beijing today. Macron said China could help bring peace to Ukraine.Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan’s president in California, a show of defiance to China.Other Big StoriesTennessee Republicans will vote today on whether to expel three Democratic lawmakers who joined a gun-control protest in the state legislature.A tech executive who founded Cash App was stabbed to death on the street in San Francisco.Catholic clergy in Baltimore abused hundreds of children and teenagers over six decades, according to the Maryland attorney general.In Ohio, a state that depends on the auto industry, electric cars are reshaping jobs.Oil and gas projects are back: Alaska’s Willow Project is one of hundreds that have been approved worldwide in the past year.A study rebutted decades of research claiming that moderate drinking has health benefits.OpinionsPerforming an abortion in Tennessee is a felony. Dr. Elise Boos has been doing it anyway.If something is advertised to you online, you probably shouldn’t buy it, Julia Angwin writes.MORNING READSHOKABig sneaker: Hokas broke the billion-dollar mark in 2022. How?Fancì Club: Meet the man behind the internet’s favorite outfits.Astronaut wrangling: NASA can send people to space. Engineering a surprise proved tricky.Retirement: Should we rethink how many years we work?Advice from Wirecutter: See if an outdoor TV is right for you.Lives Lived: Klaus Teuber began designing board games to unwind. One of his creations was The Settlers of Catan. Teuber died at 70.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICTee time: Only three players have repeated as Masters champions: Tiger Woods, Nick Faldo and Jack Nicklaus. Can Scottie Scheffler join them? Here are 10 things to know about this year’s tournament.Bucks and Nuggets clinch: Milwaukee and Denver are the No. 1 seeds in the N.B.A. playoffs. ARTS AND IDEAS The pianist Kirill Gerstein.Stephan RaboldReconsidering RachmaninoffSergei Rachmaninoff is a popular composer, but many classical music experts dismiss him as a sentimentalist who leaned into nostalgia. Now, 150 years after Rachmaninoff’s birth, the pianist Kirill Gerstein is re-examining the composer’s artistry.“We’ve tried various ways of dismissing it,” Gerstein said of Rachmaninoff’s catalog, “and it’s not going away, so possibly we can say: Well, maybe it’s not just because it’s pretty and it’s popular, but because it has a real core of aesthetic value.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookBobbi Lin for The New York TimesHot cross buns are a delicious symbol of Easter.What to ReadIn “The Peking Express,” James Zimmerman tells the story of justice-seeking bandits who derailed a train in rural China a century ago.What to Listen toFive minutes that will make you love the jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams.Late NightThe hosts discussed Trump’s return to Mar-a-Lago.Now Time to PlayThe pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were cofounded and confounded. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Prohibit (three letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidBecause of an editing error, yesterday’s newsletter misstated the history of the type of charges against Donald Trump. The Manhattan district attorney more frequently files charges of falsifying business records as felonies, not misdemeanors.P.S. Washington State University gave Dean Baquet, The Times’s former executive editor, its Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about U.S.-Africa relations.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. 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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      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