CHA board member Matthew Brewer enters Chicago mayor race

Chicago Housing Authority board member Matthew Brewer announced his bid for mayor on Thursday, arguing Mayor Brandon Johnson has fractured relationships across city government and bungled leadership at CHA amid a months-long fight over the agency’s control.

Matthew Brewer didn’t wait for the next televised debate to make his case. On Thursday, the Chicago Housing Authority board member stepped into a crowded mayoral field and did it with a direct accusation against Brandon Johnson’s leadership style.

Brewer, 46, said Johnson has divided Chicago and “alienat[ed] and demoniz[ed]” its business community. He became the first African American challenger to publicly join the race for mayor of Chicago.

In a city where Johnson’s authority has been checked by a fully elected school board and by oversight boards over the CTA and the Chicago Police Department. Brewer argued the next mayor needs something different from power. What Chicago needs most. he said. is a mayor with established relationships who can work with the City Council. the governor. and the Illinois General Assembly.

If Johnson were truly a “collaborator-in-chief,” Brewer said, the city wouldn’t be stuck inside what he described as “all of the fractured relationships and power struggles” — struggles that have left the mayor unable to “find common ground” at every level of government.

“My approach to leadership is bringing everyone together around similarity, rather than trying to alienate people along lines of difference,” Brewer told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Brewer said his own credibility comes from years of building ties in government, business, and community life, including relationships he said extend “for decades.”

“I have lots of relationships — in government, in business, in community,” he said. “I wouldn’t be walking in figuring out how to turn the lights on and looking at the phone book and figuring out who to call. It would be me reaching out to people [with whom] I’ve had relationships. in some cases for decades as a professional and as a leader in the city.” He added that this baseline of rapport “goes a long way.”.

Brewer’s pitch is tightly bound to his experience inside Johnson’s fight for control of the Chicago Housing Authority. where the power struggle played out in public for months. He said he has had a “front row seat to the dysfunction” at Johnson’s City Hall during what he described as a months-long power struggle over CHA.

For more than 16 months, Brewer said, the mayor allowed the public housing agency — which serves as Chicago’s biggest owner of rental housing — to limp along without permanent leadership.

In the closing months of a nationwide search that Brewer said he was a party to. Johnson tried to install retired City Council dean and Zoning Committee Chair Walter Burnett Jr. of the 27th Ward as CHA’s CEO. Johnson’s effort failed, Brewer said, because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development refused to grant Burnett the waivers needed to resolve conflict of interest issues.

The CHA board then defied the mayor by hiring Keith Pettigrew as CEO and giving him a four-year contract. Johnson accused the board of violating the Open Meetings Act and retaliated by trying to remove Brewer as board chair and interim operating chair. Brewer said he stayed put, and he recently stepped down as the agency’s operating chair.

Brewer said his decision to join the mayoral race — and to seek to deny Johnson a second term — is not about settling a personal grievance.

“It’s about what he called the ‘failures over the last three years to move the city forward.’”

Brewer said he witnessed “real residents whose lives are impacted by this limbo,” which he said was largely the result of “putting politics over people.” He added that the city is filled with agencies “devoid of leaderships,” a critique he framed as a direct consequence of the struggle over CHA.

With oversight boards “in every direction. ” Brewer said. the real question isn’t the “seat itself” so much as who leads and how. “The power now isn’t the seat itself as much as it is the leadership and the style and the ability to unify around a shared vision. … That’s gonna be the job of the next mayor, which is why this moment matters.”.

Even as he begins his campaign, Brewer faces the reality of the race’s financial imbalance. He is expected to run with less money than the $18.3 million-and-counting war chest of Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.

Brewer said he believes his personal story can reach voters anyway.

He described a childhood marked by addiction and separation: a father who battled drug addiction. and a mother who took her two young children away and raised Brewer and his brother on her own. Brewer said he became the first student of color to serve as student body president at Stanford. then earned an MBA at Harvard and a law degree at Yale simultaneously.

He later started a nonprofit to mentor young leaders. became a partner at a prominent Chicago law firm. and co-owns the Wieners Circle. the Lincoln Park hot dog stand known for using profanity to berate its customers. Brewer also said he owns a marijuana dispensary with his mom and brother — the first wholly owned by an African American.

In the span of a few months after he returned to his estranged father during a car trip to law school, Brewer said the relationship changed again. A Chicago police officer called to tell him that his father had died of a drug overdose.

Brewer called the story “heartbreaking,” and he said it’s part of what drives his run for mayor.

“He is someone who wanted to be a husband and a father to his children. We loved him. But his own issues got in the way and got the best of him,” Brewer said. “There’s a very thin line between that person and me. I was lucky enough to have interventions at the right time in my development. It changed my trajectory. … That’s part of the opportunity here.”.

Matthew Brewer Chicago mayoral race Brandon Johnson Chicago Housing Authority CHA board Keith Pettigrew Walter Burnett Jr. Open Meetings Act U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development CTA oversight board Chicago politics Alexi Giannoulias