By Jeffrey Blehar
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Remember Super Tuesday? Neither do I, and since the
entire Republican primary race turned out to be an anticlimactic bust, you
could be forgiven for forgetting that we had even more primaries scheduled,
including this past Tuesday’s. The top line was predictably boring, the subtext
predictably ominous (to wit, the continuing protest vote, even after the end of
the race, against Donald Trump in closed Republican primaries), but the one
bright beacon of hope worth celebrating that night came from that most unexpected
of all places: Chicago, Ill., a.k.a. The Town that Hope Forgot.
Yes, even luckless, self-defeating Chicago, that crime-
and tax-ridden repository of the Midwest’s most colorful Democratic corruption,
the town that has seemingly never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity
at the ballot box — up to and including, most recently, its election of
bumbling ultraprogressive tulpa Brandon Johnson as mayor in 2023 — even we
losers keep a little bit of pride and can kick against the pricks when goaded far enough. For on
Tuesday, a city that typically votes 80–20 Democratic during good GOP
years took Mayor Johnson’s proposed property-sales-tax increase — critical to
fund his expensive and experimental progressive agenda — tied a rock to it,
and dropped it off Navy Pier into the lake. Although some
mail-in votes remain to be counted, the current 54–46 margin against the
measure is wide enough that the outcome is certain. (Even in Chicago, where the
dead have habitually voted since the McKinley administration, there just aren’t
enough folks left in Rosehill to
close the gap.)
To understand what kind of bullet Chicago just dodged,
know that the euphemistically titled “Bring Chicago Home” bill was essentially
Johnson’s attempt to pay for his progressive pie-in-the-sky programs in the
most cynical way possible: by milking city businesses like docile cows. The
referendum text can be read here, but I will summarize its terms: The
real-estate-transfer tax would decrease by 20 percent for all
properties valued under $1 million but increase by 166.7 percent per $500 of
value for anything between $1 million and $1.5 million, then increase by 300
percent for every $500 of value beyond that. Few if any serious commercial properties
would have failed to be covered by this tax — the Johnson administration
projected (perhaps optimistically) that it would bring in $100 million per
year. Johnson himself sold it openly to his progressive allies as a tax on the
rich (whether commercial or residential), patterned after the Los Angeles
“mansion tax” from 2022. What he (but not his enemies) failed to emphasize is
that the mansion tax has utterly gutted the L.A. commercial-real-estate market
and is set to be repealed by an angry electorate this November.
Chicago has, for once, avoided having to double back on
itself — we got it right the first time. But it’s alarming to point out that
this likely would not have been possible without Johnson’s having already
established a disastrous track record in office. While the 54–46 margin is
decisive, it is no thumping, and given that the precinct-level map of the outcome very closely tracks
with that of Johnson’s 2023 mayoral victory, it’s hard not to draw the
conclusion that had this vote taken place earlier, Johnson might have gotten
his way from the same coalition that put him in office. Instead he lost enough
of it to make it truly sting, and all through his own cack-handedness: From the
spring and summer crime waves of 2023 to the recent ShotSpotter debacle, Brandon Johnson has found a way to
make himself so unpopular as a Democrat in one of America’s most Democratic
cities that luminaries such as Byrne, Bilandic, and Rahm alike are all
somewhere exhaling in relief as they find themselves slotting comfortably one
more notch down the “worst mayor in Chicago history” list, which grows ever
longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment