Things aren’t any easier for Brandon Johnson, Vallas’ Black, left-leaning rival in the April 4 runoff, who won the second spot with 21 percent — and a radically different coalition to go with his perspective on crime, policing and education.
The Cook County commissioner’s best opening to pull in a large chunk of voters will be among the 17 percent who voted for Lightfoot. Yet that still leaves him scavenging in areas like moderate Latino-majority wards and even his home precinct.
“Race is one of the most definitive predictors in how an area votes in Chicago, like in many other areas,” said Frank Calabrese, a political consultant who worked with Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) mayoral campaign. “If Vallas is doing 30, 35, 40 percent in Black wards, that means he’s doing really well.”
How Vallas wins
Vallas didn’t even come close to 30 percent numbers in most Black-majority wards on Election Day. And although that was a contest divided among nine candidates, he typically landed third or fourth place in those areas — several points behind Johnson, and where Lightfoot did her best.
However, Vallas, who got the endorsement of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and ran a tough-on-crime campaign, did well with voters in areas that resoundingly rejected the incumbent mayor: white-majority wards on the city’s North and Southwest sides, where a mix of wealthy families and civil service workers like police officers or firefighters live.
The prime pockets of voters available to Vallas are those who went for Willie Wilson, a prominent Black conservative businessperson who also ran for mayor on a police-heavy platform. In the handful of majority-Black precincts Wilson captured, he got up to 42 percent of the vote, and came in second or third in many others — capturing voters unlikely to swing left to Johnson without a lot of convincing.
What may bridge Vallas’ shortfall with Black voters is the outpouring of support he’s winning from…
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