Majority of Chicago Residents Disapprove of Far-Left Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Performance, Poll Finds

At least 70 percent of registered Chicago voters say they do not approve of far-left mayor Brandon Johnson’s performance after his first eight months in office, according to a new poll.

The poll, conducted for the education-reform advocacy group Stand for Children, was designed to measure Chicagoans’ opinions on school-choice policy. However, the poll also contained generalized questions about the performance of local politicians. Voters were asked “how you feel each of the following is performing” in response to a list of names that included “Brandon Johnson as Chicago Mayor,” according to poll results obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Stand for Children has not publicly released its poll data on local politicians.

The poll found that 43 percent of those surveyed rated Johnson’s mayoral performance as “poor,” while 27 percent said it was “only fair,” according to the Sun-Times. Only 7 percent rated Johnson’s performance as “excellent” and 14 percent rated it as “good.” Ten percent said they “didn’t know.”

Among the black men surveyed, 67 percent rated Johnson’s performance as mayor as “fair” or “poor,” while 14 percent said it was “excellent” or “good.” Seventy-five percent of the white voters surveyed gave Johnson a “fair” or “poor” job rating, as did 69 percent of Latinos.

The poll results are a stinging early rebuke for Johnson, a far-left activist and former teachers-union lobbyist who became mayor of the decidedly Democratic city in May. He defeated career school-district manager Paul Vallas in last year’s mayoral race, winning the backing of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Chicago Democrats have generally dismissed the poll of 500 registered voters, taking issue with the framing of questions and questioning who was actually surveyed.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates derisively referred to the education-reform advocate behind the poll as “Stand on Children” for its support of school choice, and she dismissed the group as “right wing,” according to the Sun-Times. The politically-powerful Chicago Teachers Union backed Johnson’s mayoral campaign.

Stand for Children is non-partisan and headed by a Democrat.

According to its website, “Stand for Children is a unique catalyst for education equity and racial justice, to create a brighter future for us all.” Jessica Handy, the organization’s executive director, spent five years working for the Illinois Senate Democrats before joining Stand for Children. The organization works to grow funding for public schools, expand access to dual credit, promote early literacy, and protect juveniles in the justice system.

Christian Perry, Johnson’s political director, refused to acknowledge grounds for the widespread dissatisfaction reflected in the poll. “We’re very proud about the mayor’s accomplishments thus far. The mayor’s gonna continue to invest in the working-class people of this city, like he’s done throughout the first year of his tenure,” Perry told the Sun-Times, pointing to a progressive checklist that includes eliminating the sub-minimum wages for tipped workers, increasing paid leave and increasing jobs for young people.

“We don’t take any stock in skewed polls commissioned by those opposed to the mayor’s agenda,” Johnson’s campaign spokesman, Bill Neidhart, wrote in a text message to the Sun-Times. “This is the same kind of poll that showed Brandon Johnson wouldn’t be mayor. They were wrong then. They are wrong now,”

Ben Krompack, vice president of Tulchin Research, which conducted the poll, denied that it was skewed or illegitimate. The poll was conducted January 4-9.

“We conducted a multi-modal survey, which was interviews initiated by live telephone interviewers calling both land lines and cell phones as well as surveys completed on-line from individuals contacted by either email or text message,” Krompack told the Sun-Times. “It’s a representative sample of registered voters in Chicago. The demographics — age, race, geography, gender — are reflective of the demographic voter electorate in the city.”

Handy told the Sun-Times that her group bankrolled a “credible poll by a credible pollster.” She also denied that Stand for Children is universally “opposed to the mayor’s agenda.”

“We disagree on some items, but there are many things that we agree with them on, particularly with regard to equitable school funding,” she said. “We’ve worked hard … to put forth policies that are student-centered first and grounded in equity.”

The poll comes in the wake of a late-December announcement by the Chicago Board of Education that it wants to move away from a system that allows families to choose schools and instead return to a system that prioritizes neighborhood schools.

Last month, the board approved a resolution to lay out a “transformational” strategic plan to “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools,” according to the Sun-Times.

Regarding the heated responses to Stand for Children’s recent poll, Handy told National Review, “It’s not focusing on the purpose of the polls — most polls contain those [kinds of] context questions. The story is really that parents and families are not on board with the mayor’s plans to transition away from public school options. Most public school kids attend a school that is not their neighborhood school. A plan to transition away from the current system is damaging to the kids, to their families, and to the city itself.”

“There are many things that we work on, public school choice is not the main thing we work on. This poll was in response to an overreaching proposal from the mayor’s office to do away with schools that many, many families and kids are relying on,” Handy said.

The Stand for Children poll found that support for school choice was overwhelming.

Eighty-two percent of Chicago voters polled said they believe that families in Chicago Public Schools should be able to choose the public school that best meets their student’s needs, whether that’s their neighborhood school, a school in another neighborhood, or a magnet, selective enrollment, or charter school. It was even higher among parents, 86 percent.

Sixty-three percent of voters felt that eliminating school choice would limit opportunities and increase school segregation.

Half of the families in Chicago Public Schools who do not choose their neighborhood school said they would move to find a school that is a better fit for them if their neighborhood school was the only public option available to them. Of the families that said they would move, 30 percent would opt to leave the Chicago altogether.