April 16, 2025
A CLOWN, A CROOK AND A FRAUD -- A TALE OF 3 MAYORS IN CHICAGO, NYC, LA,

Let’s try to have some fun – a mix-and-match multiple-choice question.

There are three mayors in America’s three largest cities, which are New York (pop. 8.258 million), Los Angeles (pop. 3.821 million) and Chicago (pop. 2.664 million). Those mayors are Eric Adams (D), Karen Bass (D) and Brandon Johnson (D) and their current terms end, respectively, in 2025, 2026 and 2027. All are on a trajectory to  lose massively.

Which noun would aptly characterize each, or more that one? (A) A clown,  defined as a clumsy, boorish buffoon. (B) An alleged crook,  defined as a person who steals, cheats or swindles. Or (C) a fraud,  defined as a person who lies and intentionally misrepresents themselves.

Let’s attach numbers to the mayors: Adams (1), Bass (2) and Johnson (3). So the question is which letters attach to which numbers? If you answered  (1) (B) then you have an extraordinary grasp of the obvious. Adams was indicted in late 2024 for bribery, wire fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions but had the charges dismissed after Donald Trump won.

If you answered (2)(C) then you understand the essence of identity politics, which is that DNA and chromosomes are more important than IQ. Bass’s incompetence was on display during January’s Pacific Palisades fires. But Bass is blameless, she says. Biden asked her to go to Ghana, no staffer told her of the Santa Ana winds and dry brush, and the empty reservoirs are the fault of state government.  She’s both a liar and the victim.

If you answered (3)(A) then you obviously remember watching Chicago’s long-running The Bozo Show on WGN-TV as a youngster. It featured Bozo the Clown. Brandon the Clown is the long-delayed primetime reimagining of the classic show.

NEW YORK CITY: Adams, an ex-NYPD, was elected in 2021 to succeed term-limited Bill de Blasio. Unlike Los Angeles and Chicago, where mayoral elections are non-partisan with a multi-candidate initial election followed by a top-two runoff if nobody gets 50 percent-plus, NYC has a partisan multi-party system called “fusion.” A candidate can run under one or more party ballot lines and the aggregate vote is fused into a total vote. This was partly a reaction to Tammany Hall, the pseudonym for the Irish-American Machine which controlled Democratic politics in New York for a century – the 1850s to the 1960s.

On the Nov. 4- ballot will be the (D) and (R) nominees, as determined by their June 24 primaries with ranked-choice voting determining the two runoff spots. With polls showing Adams losing soundly to ex-governor Andrew Cuomo the mayor has opted to run as an independent in the election.

The upcoming primary has nine candidates. Including four White men (Cuomo, governor from 2011 until he resigned Aug. 24, 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, city comptroller Brad Lander, ex-comptroller and 2021 loser Scott Springer and wealthy investor Whitney Tilson), three Black candidates (council president Adrienne  Adams, state Representative Michael Alexander Blake and state Senator Zellnor Myrie), one Latina (state senator Jessica Ramos) and state Representative Zohran Mamdani, an Arab-American.

Given that NYC’s demographics break out to 37.5 percent White, 29 percent Latino, 23.1 percent Black and a large 14.5 percent Asian, no candidate has a racial advantage. However, if the election were Cuomo/Adams/Republican Curtis Sliwa, then Adams would have a racial advantage based on the numbers.

Likewise, since Cuomo’s reputation is not pristine, and since Adams was never convicted, neither can plausibly attack the other on their ethics.

So the primary could come down to ideology and geography.

CHICAGO: Johnson’s term is half over and recent polling puts his job performance favorability rating at just over 10 percent and a Feb. M3 Strategies poll gave him 8.2 percent in a field including Paul Vallas (27.4) and Alexi Giannoulias (21). And Rahm Emanuel may come back. Brandon the Clown is toast. That’s why it seems the rest of the administration has adopted the “take as much as you can” mentality.

DEMOCRATS READY TO DUMP KAEGI: It’s far from a done deal, but county Democrats at their April 16 -17 “pre-slating” are fumbling around for a candidate to slate against Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, who has held the key office since 2018. Kaegi’s sin is that he has ignored the party’s longstanding “Honey Pot” norm by shifting more of the county tax burden from residential to commercial properties.

The assessor’s party-anointed task, dating back to the 1950s, was to keep assessed valuations (AV) low on commercial and industrial properties so as to facilitate pay-to-play contributions to the county  Democratic Party. A side benefit was that low AVs spurred development and construction on Loop property, spurring union dues, and spurring more union donations. Kaegi’s higher AVs in the Loop, coupled with COVID-inspired rental vacancies, meant a lot less construction.

Kaegi beat the tainted slated Joe Berrios in 2018, 327,743- 243,435  in the primary and, despite being slated in 2022, narrowly beat MWRD president Kari Steele 258,948-222,371 in the primary. The operating engineers’ (IUOE) Local 150 gave Steele $1 million. For 2026 party insiders and union leaders are grooming Board of Review (BOR) commissioner Samantha Steele (D) to challenge Kaegi in the primary. The BOR is the entity which can reverse (and lower) Kaegi’s AVs and thus generate money from lawyers. Add to that Kaegi being a White man and having backed a candidate against Black BOR chair Larry Rogers Jr. in 2024, and Kaegi is definitely “persona non grata,” or unwelcome.

But then Steele was arrested for a DUI in Chicago on in November of last year and her intemperate, egotistic, vulgar verbiage recorded on a police body cam will be a great ad for Kaegi in 2026. Nevertheless Steele, southwest suburban Lyons Township assessor Patrick Hynes and Rogers’ chief-of-staff Dana Pointer will appear at pre-slating, as will Kaegi. “I’m running” said Kaegi, regardless of slating. He largely self-funded in 2022, and “will do it again,” he added.

There will be 59 supplicants groveling before the 80 committeepersons on April 16-17, of which 39 are lawyers vying for slating for 4 countywide judgeships, which means a whole lot of “unhappy endings,” plus eight for three MWRD commissioner spots, including Dan (Pogo) Pogorzelski, who lost in 2024. More on this dog-and-pony show in a later column.

Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com

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