After months of deliberation, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Sunday set out on the uphill road to reelection — portraying himself as the only legitimate progressive in the crowded 2027 mayoral race.
The mayor plans to make the long-awaited announcement Sunday afternoon at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, a nod to his efforts to overturn decades of disinvestment in the Black community, and the need to galvanize support among Black Chicagoans.
Johnson’s team is portraying the election as a stark choice for voters: either renew his four-year contract and give him a second chance to tax the rich and deliver for working class residents and African Americans pushing for investment in their long neglected neighborhoods, or return to the days of school closings, shuttered mental health clinics, special interest decision-making, and outsize influence of big business on city government.
“Chicago voters have an option between the billionaires and the Brandon Johnson coalition, which is a multiracial, intergenerational movement that came together three years ago to elect a working class champion to deliver for working families all across Chicago,” said Johnson’s political director, Christian Perry.
Johnson took office boldly proclaiming his intention to become Chicago’s longest-serving mayor. That would have required him to exceed the 22-year reign of Richard M. Daley.
With his wife, Stacie Johnson, two sons, Owen and Ethan, and daughter, Braedyn, looking on, Brandon Johnson is sworn in as mayor of Chicago during his inauguration ceremony at Credit Union 1 Arena May 15, 2023.
After a rocky start, Johnson dropped the talk about longevity and began the difficult task of learning on the job. His only prior experience in elected office had been a two-year stint as a Cook County commissioner.
For months, Johnson fueled speculation that his low poll numbers, his meager campaign fund and his own hesitation to definitively declare for reelection could prompt him to walk away from a second term. On the day before taking his oldest child to college, an emotional Johnson said he wanted to “hold onto this moment” a little longer — both personally and politically.
By waiting until after Labor Day to announce his decision to run again, Johnson has put himself behind the eight ball. He has less than $650,000 in his campaign fund compared to Giannoulias’ $22 million. Johnson has the power of incumbency and has been making the most of that, but he still needs money to defend his record.
He doesn’t need to duplicate the $12 million that allowed him to go from single-digit obscurity to the mayor’s office in 2023 in a campaign bankrolled and staffed largely by the Chicago Teachers Union. But he does need enough cash to run costly television ads.
“We’re still living in a time where broadcast TV ads are important. They haven’t become irrelevant,” said longtime Democratic strategist Joanna Klonsky, a close advisor to then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
“Brandon Johnson’s core strength in 2023 was that he had a ground army of volunteers who were willing to get out there and knock doors for him. But he still will have to do paid media advertising if he’s going to win the election… That is going to take a heck of a lot more money than he has on hand right now.”
The SEIU factor in the campaign
Four years ago, Johnson had a powerful coalition of progressive labor unions that included the CTU, where he started as a community organizer and the Service Employees International Union Locals 1, 73 and Healthcare.
But the CTU’s failed attempt to take over SEIU non-teaching jobs at the Chicago Board of Education broke apart that powerful coalition. SEIU, which contributed $4.5 million to Johnson’s first mayoral campaign, is now expected to pull its support of Johnson. That could cost the mayor millions and shrink his army of political foot soldiers who knock on doors, distribute campaign literature and work the phones.
All of that leaves Johnson in a hole from which he needs to climb out.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates failed to get her members to raise their dues at a time when winning a majority on the newly elected school board and electing a board president is an equally important priority. But because she also serves as president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, she can draw from those funds as well. And, she said, “my union always does the impossible.”
“The question of money is always one where we’re going to lose the arms race,” Davis Gates said. “But we have a membership that is over 80% women, where we pool our resources together, and we do the best that we can through phone banking. We do the best that we can through canvassing. We do the best that we can through influencing our friends and our family to understand these issues and dimension.”
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates speaks in front of Mayor Brandon Johnson during a news conference at City Hall Dec. 23, 2025.
Four years ago, Johnson carried a second-place finish into the runoff and managed to defeat Paul Vallas by highlighting his conservative views in a heavily Democratic city that leans progressive. Vallas had run for governor once as a Democrat, but his own conservative viewpoints on social media were his undoing.
The incumbent mayor is expected to try to do the same to Giannoulias. On the day after Giannoulias entered the race, Johnson said the same billionaire business interests that closed schools and mental health clinics under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel are trying to “take us back to a time of trauma and torment,” and declared that Chicago is “not going back.”
Former Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), who served as unofficial floor leader under Daley and Emanuel, said Johnson’s attempts to portray Giannoulias as the reincarnation of Emanuel will not work.
“If he comes out to dirty up Giannoulias, or he tries to dirty up [mayoral candidate and U.S. Rep. Mike] Quigley, they don’t lean left, but they are clearly not conservative and they are not going to be people you can put basically into a corner like Vallas — who is on record saying ‘I am truly a Republican.’ His own words were enough to put him in that spot. You won’t find that with Giannoulias. You’re not going to find that with Quigley,” O’Connor said.
Eric Adelstein, a media strategist for Giannoulias, said he’s bracing for Johnson to “run as far to the left as he can” and portray himself as “a mayor who’s for the little guy against the big guy.”
“The problem is people believe that’s where his heart is, but they don’t believe he’s been very successful at it and they’re just hungry for leadership,” Adelstein said.
Adelstein expects Johnson to attempt to portray Giannoulias as “some out of touch caricature,” but says that will fall flat because his client is “building a coalition that includes business and labor and electeds and community folks.”
Johnson’s advantage — the affordability card
Johnson’s advantage is that he has the progressive lane to himself at a time when affordability is everything. As he embarks on his final budget, he’ll likely renew his failed efforts to tax the rich and dare the City Council to shoot his proposal down again.
On the campaign trail, he is certain to tout his biggest accomplishment on his progressive revenue to-do list: a tax on social media companies that is expected to generate a windfall of $49.2 million this year, nearly 60% above the city’s original estimate.
Most of Johnson’s progressive legislative accomplishments came in his first year in office when he pushed through the most generous paid leave policy in the country, reinstated the city’s Department of Environment, and laid the groundwork to reopen shuttered mental health clinics.
More recently, he has offered renter protections and is pushing for a moratorium on the construction of new data centers to attract progressive voters, many of whom live on the North Side and along the lakefront.
Johnson will also benefit from the fact that crime is down in Chicago. The city saw 122 murders in June, July and August, the lowest summer total since 1965, according to city and police data. Johnson will tout investments he has made in youth jobs and in violence prevention workers who work to de-escalate gun violence.
In 2023, Johnson finished second on the strength of his performance with young progressives along the north lakefront, the hipster Milwaukee Avenue corridor and left-leaning hubs on the Northwest Side. He didn’t win a single majority-Black ward in the first round, before winning every majority-Black ward in the runoff against Vallas.
This time, Johnson has to consolidate the Black vote immediately to stand a chance at making the runoff. That’s in part because at least some north lakefront voters appear to be disappointed with Johnson.
“It’s a fickle voting bloc,” Klonsky said. “They have turned on people that they’ve voted for on a number of occasions in recent years… Those early stages of the Johnson administration, where things were really chaotic and difficult… that’s when he lost some of those voters, and it’s been hard to get them back. It’s not a foregone conclusion that he can’t get them back, but time is running out.”
It hasn’t been all rosy with African American voters either. Johnson himself acknowledged recently that he paid the price for the difficult choices he was forced to make during the migrant crisis that cost the city $639.6 million. It reignited an us-versus-them conflict between Black and Latino Chicagoans.
“I understand the frustration that Black people felt during that mission.” I do. I do,” Johnson said in July. “Here’s what I understand: We don’t ask for much. We don’t. We just don’t want our schools to close. We want opportunities for paid jobs… For Black Chicago in particular, it kind of felt [like] government was able to turn on resources in a moment’s notice — and our communities have been starved for decades.”
Cook County Commissioner Tara Stamps, a former Johnson campaign chairman and close ally, said Black Chicagoans may have lingering resentments about the migrant crisis, but the damage done “calls for repair, not abandonment.”
“I’m not going to leave my husband because he pissed me off. I’m not going to divorce myself from my children because they disappointed me,” said Stamps, who served as Johnson’s mentor teacher at Jenner Elementary School. In June 2023, she took his seat on the county board.
“If it’s anything that I can say to Black people in this moment, if you think it’s anybody else other than Brandon Johnson that has the Black community at heart, you are not paying attention, and it will be a mistake to put your vote and your confidence in anybody other than Brandon Johnson if you are trying to preserve and maintain anything, any kind of Black identity in this city.”
How is Johnson polling?
Sources said Johnson’s own polling shows his public approval rating among Black voters plunged to 28% in early 2024. More recently it stood somewhere between 48% and 52% in those same polls.
If the migrant crisis was a low point for Johnson politically, Operation Midway Blitz was a high-water mark. It showcased Johnson as a champion for Chicagoans and their first line of defense against the Trump administration.
When Chicagoans were being swept off streets and entire neighborhoods raided by ICE agents, Johnson signed a series of executive orders aimed at thwarting their efforts and holding them accountable. In the year leading up to the deportation campaign, Johnson flew to Washington D.C. to defend Chicago at a U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in March 2025, and he has gone toe-to-toe with President Donald Trump on multiple occasions.
ICE agents detain a protester as other protesters try to stop them in the East Side neighborhood Oct. 14, 2025.
Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times
Ald. Mike Rodriguez (22nd), who represents the Little Village neighborhood that was targeted repeatedly by federal authorities, said Johnson has a compelling story to tell Latino voters.
“While our voting numbers have lagged behind other communities, we are a sleeping giant, and our community has been waking up and will continue to be waking up and be more of an electoral force,” said Rodriguez, who recently announced he will not seek re-election.
Turnout will be a major factor, as it was four years ago, when Johnson made the runoff by capturing just 21.6% of the 35.8% of registered voters who showed up at the polls.
“A lot of people have gotten to the point where, if they don’t care about either candidate, they stay home,” said O’Connor. “That’s how you get people who are truly unqualified and should be very unpopular, but their unpopularity at that point is a benefit to them because people stay away.”
Retiring Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) learned the political game from his mentor, now-convicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. He predicts that Johnson will make the runoff and lose to whomever his opponent turns out to be.
Quinn says that most voters he talks to consider Johnson a “nice guy that isn’t up to running the city.”
But it would be a mistake to write him off.
“His path to victory is that he needs a robust turnout in [Democratic Socialist] wards,” Quinn said. “He needs to rely heavily on the teachers union and lean on older African Americans, and he needs to present a clean, crisp reason for why Chicagoans should give him another four years.”