Brandon Johnson: Organizer. Anti-establishment. Servant-leader. From middle school teacher to Chicago mayor.
He’s the son of a pastor, a middle child of 10 brothers and sisters raised in a warm and boisterous home in Elgin that was known to host the occasional Bible study, foster child or victim of domestic violence in need of a safe haven.
Then tragedy struck in his teens. His mother grew ill from congestive heart failure and other ensuing health conditions. Yet in this period of crisis, Brandon Johnson emerged as a leader, calling together his siblings to craft a plan to care for the family matriarch and the home she once ran, recalled Andrea Johnson Williams, his younger sister.
Johnson was only 19 when his mother, Wilma Jean Johnson, died in 1995 at the age of 50.
The household was not wealthy by any means, but as a child, Williams always loved how their beautiful hardwood floors would gleam. She remembered Johnson showing the younger kids how to clean them properly, getting down on his hands and knees to scrub “the same way mommy taught us.”
“He just really stepped up in that way,” recalled Williams, pastor at Community Center Christian Ministries in Elgin. “From that moment, I never had a problem with Brandon leading. … It was collaborative. It was inclusive.”
In Tuesday’s mayoral runoff election, Johnson — an underdog candidate — narrowly defeated front-runner Paul Vallas, a former Chicago Public Schools CEO and a fixture at City Hall decades ago during the Mayor Richard M. Daley era.
Williams predicted Johnson will run Chicago as mayor in the same manner he led his family years ago — through good example, hard work and compassion.
“He was born to do this,” she said. “He is a servant-leader and he is ready to do the job.”
It was a stunning victory for the previously little-known Cook County commissioner and Black progressive, who was often billed as the anti-establishment candidate of the people.
Yet over the course of the often-heated campaign, 47-year-old Johnson grew into a political superstar of the left, garnering national headlines for his rhetoric of battling the wealthy and elite ruling class.
During his victory speech Tuesday, Johnson detailed his vision for Chicago as a city where “no one is too poor to live in one of the richest cities in one of the wealthiest nations at the richest time in the history of the world,” adding later, “Let’s take this bold, progressive movement around these United States of America. Chicago, we can show the country, we can show the world what’s possible when we stand on our values as one people.”
Before his victory, that vision was reinforced by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally just days before the election.
“That’s what Brandon Johnson is about,” Sanders said to cheering crowds. “He’s going to do what the city has never seen. He is going to bring people together to make sure that all of our people have a decent life. And what Brandon and all of us are doing in Chicago tonight is what we have to do all over the country … and that is create local, state and federal government that works for all. Not just the 1%.”
Johnson pledged during the campaign to bring Chicago fully funded schools, more affordable housing and improved mental health care, while tackling the deep-rooted causes of violence and poverty.
A former middle school teacher, Johnson frequently touts his several years of teaching at Jenner Academy Elementary School, near the since-demolished Cabrini-Green public housing development, as particularly formative in his decision to run for mayor as well as his platform. He later taught at Westinghouse College Prep on the West Side and then served as an organizer and registered lobbyist for the Chicago Teachers Union, which fiercely backed — and bankrolled — his campaign.
Tara Stamps, who taught alongside Johnson at Jenner, recalled his commitment to children inside and outside the classroom.
“When he talks about the students that touched his heart and transformed his politics, that all started at Jenner,” said Stamps, administrative director of new teacher development at the Chicago Teachers Union. “In many ways the teacher that taught next door to me … is the same person that now Chicago gets to meet. His core values are the same. When you hear Brandon say, ‘I’m investing in people,’ he means it. Because that’s what he did as a teacher.”
When there were few sports teams for kids at Jenner due to a dearth of coaches, Johnson became the basketball coach — and the football coach as well as the coach for the softball team, Stamps recounted.
“He did that because he understood the relationship between sports and academics,” she said.
He also knew the value of giving youth safe spaces, to keep them off the streets and out of harm’s way, she added.
In the classroom, the social studies teacher encouraged his students to have a deep knowledge of current events, drawing parallels to their own lives and communities to make global issues relevant, Stamps said.
When learning about South Africa, the students would make dioramas reflecting life there in art class and practice trading currency at the exchange rate during math, she said. They discussed how apartheid in many ways mirrored their own experiences in Cabrini-Green, which was being demolished in real-time by wrecking balls within walking distance of the wealthy Gold Coast neighborhood, Stamps recalled.
“They were watching their buildings being torn down,” she said. “They were watching gentrification take place before their very eyes.”
There was one student in particular who had extremely high grades and test scores throughout school but received one D, which would have precluded her from graduation, Stamps recounted; Johnson believed the young lady was treated unfairly and fought the administration to allow her to matriculate.
Stamps likened Johnson to the legendary Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, whom her late mother, community activist Marion Nzinga Stamps, helped elect in 1983.
“Brandon will fight for you,” she said. “We believe in a just Chicago. With Brandon at the helm … we can deliver a city we all deserve.”
‘Serve people, care for them’
As teenagers, Johnson’s sister recalled that the two of them learned how to drive in 15-passenger church vans.
After the death of his mother, Johnson — who was in college at the time — helped the church’s ministries, leading its youth group; Williams remembered them taking the children to gospel singing competitions, with Johnson accompanying on drums.
The church kept a bucket of clothing — an assortment of tights, skirts, pants and shirts — so every child could have access to clean dress clothes if needed, Williams said.
“They trusted us,” she said. “And we did what we knew to do. Serve people, care for them and collaborate.”
Many thought Johnson would grow up to be a pastor like his father, Andrew Johnson II, Williams recalled. But over the years, she realized how many people he could help as a community organizer and public servant.
“Brandon has a gift that my mom had, which was to really see the potential in people and then pull it out,” she said.
On the campaign trail a few days before the election, Johnson made a stop at Sweet Holy Spirit Church on the city’s South Side.
He pledged to celebrate his mayoral victory by buying a pair of size 13 snakeskin shoes, like those worn by politically powerful Bishop Larry Trotter. Johnson also talked of his church roots and his father, a preacher and carpenter, joking of the pressure of being the son of “Black Jesus.”
“I know I get to go to heaven no matter what I do,” he added. “I taught middle school.”
The mayor-elect graduated from Elgin High School and yearbook photos show him on the varsity football team and co-hosting a school talent show. At Aurora University, he earned a bachelor’s degree in human services and youth development, as well as a master’s degree in teaching.
In his victory speech on Tuesday, Johnson spoke of how his childhood and family life influenced some of his policy concerns, such as public safety and a theme he campaigned on: investment.
He first thanked his wife, Stacie Rencher-Johnson, saying, “I love you, baby,” and then their children, Owen, Ethan and Braedyn. The four of them stood behind Johnson as he addressed the crowd.
“When I talk about the city feeling unsafe for so many, it’s because as a husband, as a father, raising three children on the West Side of Chicago, I’ve had to shield my children from bullets that fly right outside our front door,” he said at the Marriott Marquis on the city’s South Side.
They live in the Austin neighborhood, which his sister said was a very intentional choice for Johnson.
“He wanted to raise his family around other Black and brown people,” Williams said. “To give them the culture and the experience that you just can’t get everywhere.”
But Johnson often points to his neighborhood as an example of the striking inequity in Chicago and the surrounding area: The Austin community’s median household income is a little over $35,500 compared with just over $62,000 citywide and almost $68,000 in Cook County, according to the most recent data from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
Austin also led the city in homicides with 45 in 2022; the vast majority of murder victims in Chicago are young, Black men, according to city data.
On Instagram in January, Johnson posted a picture of himself and his sons, ages 15 and 10, discussing his worries for their safety.
“I want them to ride their bikes safely,” he said in the post. “I want them safe in their school communities. I want them to grow up, and lead their families. I want grandchildren, and for my father, Pastor Andrew Johnson, to have great-grandchildren. I want them to live, to love and be loved.”
“I want this for you too,” one follower responded. “And for all Black men and families.”
Activism, rallies and a hunger strike
Throughout his years of organizing and activism, Johnson sometimes seemed like more of an anti-mayor, often challenging previous heads of the city.
In 2013, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel spoke at an event hosted by a private equity firm at the opulent Cadillac Palace Theatre in the Loop. Joined by national media, Emanuel answered questions about politics and the state of the union in front of a paying audience.
Johnson was at a diametrically opposed event across town: Thousands of community activists and union workers gathered at the University of Illinois at Chicago Forum to send a message to the mayor, the corporate engagement and its attendees.
He drummed up the crowd during the rally, which was organized to tell “the mayor of this city and his corporate, greedy, elitist friends that this city belongs to the people in this room. Black people, brown people, poor people, working-class people,” he said at the time.
A decade later, Emanuel apparently harbored no ill will: The former mayor congratulated Johnson on his victory on social media late Tuesday.
“It’s a job of a lifetime, Brandon,” Emanuel tweeted. “Your success is the Second City’s success — and I am rooting for your success.”
When Chicago Public Schools planned to close Dyett High School in the Washington Park neighborhood, parents and activists launched a hunger strike that lasted more than 30 days to save the school; the district reversed its decision and in 2016 the school reopened as Dyett High School for the Arts.
Johnson was right beside the parents during the hunger strike, recalled Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, a member of the Kenwood-Oakland community organization that coordinated the protest.
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “For people that want to step up and take that spot and do the work, that says a lot about who you are.”
Taylor recalled Johnson and other union lobbyists taking her to Springfield to speak to politicians as a Chicago Public Schools parent years ago, before she became alderman. He would encourage her to be “authentic,” she said.
“There was always a space to allow for parents to speak,” she said. “They didn’t tell us what to say. They just made sure we had access to elected officials.”
Taylor believes Johnson’s election will spur a new era for Chicago, with a greater focus on building communities and tackling inequity.
“Brandon is a community organizer,” she said. “Community organizing 101 says you organize around what the community wants to see. If we had a city that organized around what communities want to see, they would look very different than the way they look now, best believe you me.”
During the campaign, he was often cast as the less-experienced candidate by his rival Vallas, who had spent decades leading schools across the nation as well as overseas.
Yet Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, also a former teacher, sees Johnson’s resume from a different perspective: She said she believes teaching can offer some of the best preparation for public service.
Elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2018, Johnson has touted his work to pass the “Justice for Black Lives” resolution in 2020. Though largely symbolic, it served as a general mandate urging the county to protect Black people and other often-marginalized folks against violence at the hands of law enforcement as well as unjust incarceration. He was also the lead sponsor of the “Just Housing” amendment, which precludes housing discrimination based on an applicant’s criminal record.
In a 2020 radio interview, during a wave of unrest following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Johnson referred to defunding the police as “a very real political goal.”
Although his critics repeatedly pointed to the statement as a harbinger of a weakened police force under Johnson, the mayor-elect has said his public safety plan includes hiring and training hundreds more detectives — beefing up the department rather than dismantling it.
At the height of the October 2019 Chicago Public Schools teachers strike, Johnson penned a Tribune letter to the editor ticking off a list of resources and personnel that are required for schools and students to thrive — and demanding Mayor Lori Lightfoot “meet these needs in the current teacher contract.”
“Every day, my students traversed a small desert of poverty to get to class, even as they were only steps away from oases of wealth, complete with glistening towers and gilded homes,” he said in the letter, which he signed as commissioner. “The present concentration of economic power in the hands of a select few, a condition that has worsened over time, has eviscerated the working class and poor in our city.”
Preckwinkle, who endorsed Johnson in the runoff, praised him as a supporter of small businesses and working families.
“The first thing I think he’s going to do is reach out to both the people who supported him and those who didn’t, to say he’s going to be a mayor for all of Chicago,” she said. “He talks about coalitions. He talks about collaboration. … I think these are all things he deeply believes in, it’s not just something he’s saying in the campaign. So I would expect that from the very beginning, you’re going to see that.”
Chicago Tribune’s Adriana Pérez and Alice Yin contributed.
