Joining mayor's race, Giannoulias casts himself as a coalition builder, says Johnson ‘has not met the moment — Chicago Sun-Times

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

Joining mayor's race, Giannoulias casts himself as a coalition builder, says Johnson ‘has not met the moment — Chicago Sun-Times | AIPROPX

Taking aim at Brandon Johnson’s revolving door of senior leadership, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias joined the race for mayor Sunday, portraying himself as the coalition builder needed to solve Chicago’s enormous problems.

Giannoulias enters the race as a presumed frontrunner with a political target on his back after raising $22 million from business leaders and building trade unions.

At the risk of biting the hand that fed his campaign, Giannoulias vowed to support the millionaires tax that Johnson has also championed.

But unlike Johnson, who has used his first three city budgets to shrink the Chicago Police Department by attrition, Giannoulias promised to hire 1,000 additional Chicago police officers by 2030 and bring back ShotSpotter, the gunshot technology contract that Johnson canceled.

Giannoulias argued that Johnson’s leadership “has not met the moment,” even though “his heart’s in the right place.”

“His administration has become a revolving door of senior leadership, making it harder for the city to get things done, reducing confidence in the city — and the whole world sees it,” Giannoulias told the Sun-Times in a recent, wide-ranging interview.

Effective leadership requires “forming coalitions and working with people,” and Johnson is “failing at this,” Giannoulias said.

“Jousting with the governor. Making demands at the end of session rather than working earlier to develop policy and build support… His attempt to raise property taxes was rejected by the City Council 50-to-0 and the City Council passed a budget 29-to-19 when he failed to back off the job-killing corporate head tax,” Giannoulias said.

“A mayor who cannot move an agenda through Springfield and City Council is having difficulty… looking out for the interest of Chicagoans.”

The abrupt resignation of the city's chief financial officer, Steve Mahr, and his top deputy — just as Chicago prepares to host a crucial investors conference and the City Council gears up for a grueling election year budget season — is the most recent example of the “revolving door” at Johnson’s City Hall, Giannoulias said.

“He hired a longtime veteran of the city in Rich Guidice to have a steady hand when he got elected, and he left less than a year into the administration. Police Superintendent [Larry] Snelling resigned with less than a year left in this administration, which is the most challenging time of year for the police,” Giannoulias said.

“Three sister agencies went without a leader for more than a year: CPS, CHA and CTA. And after going nearly ten years without a credit downgrade, Chicago has… been downgraded by three rating agencies in just over a three-year period.”

Giannoulias condemned as “dangerously irresponsible” the Chicago Board of Education’s decision to roll the dice and approve a nearly $10 billion budget that counts on $150 million from Springfield, along with a $285 million tax increment financing surplus that the City Council has not approved.

He called it yet another sign that the Chicago Teachers Union, which bankrolled and staffed Johnson’s 2023 mayoral campaign, is calling the shots in his administration.

“Instead of adopting the [Chicago Public Schools] CEO’s proposed budget, which included some staffing cuts, the CTU-linked members jammed through this alternative budget, which avoids any hard choices about structural changes. That’s not leadership,” Giannoulias said. “I will work with the board president to advocate for more funding. But we have to start with a more responsible budget… Glittery possible revenue is not responsible.”

Giannoulias said a more responsible school budget must confront the financial elephant in the room — 145 schools with more empty seats than students.

If elected mayor, he’s vowing to tackle that problem, but with a community- and parent-driven process “paired with real investment in students and staff... not closures imposed from downtown with little notice.”

“Past closures, particularly in 2013, were handled in a way that broke trust with Black and Latino communities, and that history can’t be ignored or repeated,” Giannoulias said.

Johnson points to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to close 50 schools in one fell swoop in 2013 as an example of glaring disinvestment in South and West Side communities.

But at the risk of being portrayed as Emanuel 2.0, Giannoulias said, “You have to make tough decisions… A school with too few students cannot offer the full range of programs… The student experience is not the same. It’s not a healthy environment for 70 or 80 students to be in a school that was built for 1,500. It’s not good for anyone.”

A former state treasurer, Giannoulias got his start in politics as a basketball-playing buddy of Barack Obama. He played professional basketball in Greece, where he learned valuable lessons about competiveness, teamwork and how to, as he put it, "surround yourself with players that are better than you so that you can get better."

It’s no surprise, then, that former two-term president is Giannoulias' political mentor and role model.

“What he did outstandingly well — and the lesson he taught me at every step for every office he ran, he said, 'Make sure you surround yourself with people who are way smarter than you at every stop of the way.' That’s been like buried in my brain,” Giannoulias said. “I look for the most capable, talented people who have an inherent understanding of that particular challenge.”

Giannoulias, 50, has four daughters under the age of 10. He said he and his wife struggled with the decision to dive into a grueling campaign for a "brutal" job with greatly diminished powers, enormous problems and no easy solutions.

Chicago is facing a $90 million mid-year shortfall, a $1 billion-plus budget gap in 2027 and a $36 billion pension crisis with two of the four city employee pension funds hovering dangerously close to bankruptcy.

"It's really difficult when you have four little girls that you love ...