Chicago Teachers Union spends historic money, installs one of its own as mayor

OPINION:

On April 4, Chicago residents inexplicably voted to saddle the city with at least four more years of corrupt, dysfunctional, union-dominated government.

There was hope for a few weeks when Mayor Lori Lightfoot, under whose benighted leadership the nation’s third-largest metropolis had been transformed from a civic embarrassment into an abject disgrace, went down in flames as the incumbent in the primary election.

Undaunted, the Big Government labor machine somehow managed to install someone even worse in her place, buying the seat with taxpayer union dues.

More than 95% of Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s campaign contributions came from 15 labor unions — with 65% of the total coming from the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU.

Mr. Johnson proudly refers to himself as a “union organizer,” primarily on behalf of the teachers union. He organized and participated in a variety of CTU activism going back to 2012, supported the “Fight for $15” campaign that focused on expanding rights to illegal immigrants in schools, and was a key player in the 2019 Chicago Public Schools strike, abandoning more than 300,000 students for 10 school days.

Most recently, Mr. Johnson helped broker COVID-19 school reopening requirements in 2021 and 2022.

Perhaps that’s why it comes as little surprise that Illinois State Election Board data reveals that CTU violated its own policy by using member dues to donate $2.3 million to Mr. Johnson’s campaign, despite language in its own handbook outlawing such expenditures, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

In response to Chicago’s 695 homicides in 2022 alone, Mr. Johnson continues to act on behalf of the school union agenda of police “reform” by promising on his first day as mayor to cut at least $150 million from the Chicago Police Department’s budget to address perceived systemic racism.

Despite the demonstrated ability of criminals to ignore some of the nation’s toughest gun control measures, Mr. Johnson plans to double down by creating new departments like the Chicago Police Anti-Gun Trafficker Department and the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, while ending the Gang Database and closing Homan Square community center.

His prescription to end the epidemic of violence is a “holistic” approach.

It isn’t clear what that would entail, but you can bet it isn’t more and better-equipped police on the streets.

The prospects are even bleaker in the classroom, where Mr. Johnson vows to continue his previous activism of turning public schools into a sanctuary for immigrants and refugees.

On election night, Mr. Johnson was introduced at his victory party by none other than CTU President Stacy Davis Gates. Mr. Johnson’s victory address thanked God, his family and government unions — take a guess which one he’ll take his orders from.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, later boasted in a tweet that “the impossible became possible” when a candidate even deeper in hoc to labor unions than Ms. Lightfoot was installed in the Wrigley Mansion.

To be blunt, Mr. Johnson is an agent of the teachers unions, and they knew as much when they paid for his electoral victory. Now, with the city once more firmly in its clutches, there’s nothing to stop CTU from continuing the Chicago education system’s transformation into a taxpayer-financed indoctrination center for its radical social agenda.

Mr. Johnson has already denounced school choice and charter schools while attempting to kill the Invest in Kids Act, which provides scholarships to low-income students.

An unapologetic socialist, Mr. Johnson even intends to impose an additional $800 million tax on non-Chicago residents, including a commuter tax on suburban dwellers who work in the city, raising the nation’s highest hotel taxes and imposing taxes on major airlines for “polluting the air” in Chicago neighborhoods.

The only thing worse for the already-besieged Windy City than Mr. Johnson breaking his campaign promises would be his keeping them.

Thanks to the wheelbarrows full of taxpayer-funded union dues dollars, Brandon Johnson and his union cronies will happily complete the city’s mutation into a dystopian Disneyland.

And blame the disaster that follows on someone else.

• Aaron Withe is CEO of the Freedom Foundation.