Not your grandparents' City Council: Chicago aldermen less aligned with 5th floor

Chicago Tribune

4 days ago

When Ald. Scott Waguespack started his City Council career as an opponent of Mayor Richard M. Daley, it was mostly at the wrong end of a bunch of lopsided votes.
But his days as one of five aldermen who said no to Daley's infamous parking meter deal or a quixotic early thorn to Mayor Rahm Emanuel are long gone.
Now, when the Northwest Side alderman butts heads with Mayor Brandon Johnson, he is often one of many across a relatively broad political spectrum, and sometimes he even gets his way.
'You see more accountability and more responsibility that's shared now than in the past,' he said. 'I think you're seeing people kind of trust in each other.'
It's a sea change that grew under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and is gaining momentum in City Hall with Johnson: The City Council, long derided as a mayoral puppet, is increasingly operating independent of the fifth floor.
The shift follows the demise of Chicago's infamous machine politics. It also tracks with the ascension of the aldermanic Progressive Caucus and the 'Common Sense Caucus' formed in part to oppose it, both shifting groups that bring more ideological force into debates.
As the City Council changes, some aldermen lament a decline in decorum and a heightened willingness to impede opponents by any means as harmful to progress. But others view the growing pains as a worthwhile price for what they hope will become permanent independence.
'Under Lightfoot we were toddlers,' Ald. Andre Vasquez said. 'Under Johnson, we are teenagers.'
Three days before his 2025 budget finally passed after tense negotiations, Johnson acknowledged a 'seismic shift' at City Hall.
'Look, I'm the first person to admit that the mayor's office, as well as City Council, won't be our grandparents' mayor's office or City Council,' he said. He touted aldermanic diversity and rejected the 'monolithic' approach of the past, though at the start of his term he squashed an attempt by some aldermen to control who got what leadership roles.
Aldermen and City Hall-focused experts have seen the ongoing transformation too.
'Johnson is either losing votes or having to make major changes,' said Dick Simpson, a former alderman who strongly criticized Mayor Richard J. Daley's agenda.
For years, Daley's powerful Democratic Party machine ruled Chicago through patronage. By Mayor Harold Washington's time in office, however, white machine aldermen organized to powerfully oppose the city's first Black executive.
Richard M. Daley rebuilt the 'rubber stamp' by amassing enough political and financial power to threaten or cajole recalcitrant aldermen to back his agenda, holding out the carrot of projects for their wards or the stick of an opponent in their next election campaign to help seal the deal. It largely held under Emanuel, who was quick to use his clout to bring aldermen in line.
But it became 'crystal clear' under Lightfoot that the City Council 'buried its rubber stamp and has become a legislative body,' Simpson, a retired University of Illinois Chicago political science professor, wrote in one of his many reports studying how closely aldermen align with mayors.
Johnson's half-completed term 'so far has shown an even greater degree of conflict,' the team carrying on his research wrote in a soon-to-publish book excerpt.
The change follows the rise of the Progressive Caucus, a once-fledging cohort that now boasts 19 aldermen and a powerful hand, lead researcher Kumar Ramanathan said.
As progressive power grew in the decade since the caucus was founded, a growth highlighted by Johnson's victory, a similarly-sized loose coalition — the unofficial, self-dubbed Common Sense Caucus — emerged in part to oppose it.
Northwest Side Ald. Nick Sposato, now one of the body's most conservative members, joined the Progressive Caucus after he defeated machine-backed Ald. John Rice in 2011. He left the caucus in 2016 and teased current members after the November election with Donald Trump flags affixed to his wheelchair. Waguespack was head of the Progressive Caucus for years but has often aligned with the 'Common Sense' group's opposition.
The two groups are difficult, if not impossible, to map onto the typical left-right American political spectrum, in part because aldermen often join forces due to political expediency, ethnic background or geographic particulars rather than ideological agreement. The Progressive Caucus includes many progressives and several Democratic Socialists, and the Common Sense group counts among its members several centrists and the City Council's most conservative members.
Those two coalitions are shifting forces that show up differently at each vote, and many aldermen fit neither. A large bloc remains primarily focused not on legislating at City Hall, but on providing ward services, said Ramanathan, a UIC postdoctoral scholar who is active in several progressive community groups.
But the emergence of two poles in the City Council, albeit messy ones, has given aldermen footing to have debates outside the old with-mayor, against-mayor paradigm, Ramanathan said. He pointed to Johnson's decision to remain neutral during recent votes on whether to ban the sale of new fur products or lower the city's speed limit.
'You are starting to see the legislative process emerge independently from the mayor,' Ramanathan said, adding that he believes the split would have continued regardless of who won the last mayoral election.
This City Council's makeup at first offered Johnson a great deal of middle ground with aldermen. As several pieces of major progressive legislation passed early in the term, 'it felt like we had the keys to the car,' Ald. Desmon Yancy said.
'The Blackest, gayest, most Latino, most progressive council,' Yancy said. 'What happened?'
The opposition Johnson faces has been led by many centrist and conservative aldermen. They argue it has more to do with him than any permanent shift, often citing his progressive views and failure to communicate with them.
But even winning over the Progressive Caucus more closely aligned with his agenda has been a challenge. Last year, each member of the group voted against Johnson's proposed property tax hike for the 2025 budget when aldermen struck it down in a remarkable 50-0 decision, and many have hit him with strong public criticism.
Vasquez argued the varying support from progressives is a response to the issue-specific stances voters expect them to hold onto, even when that means breaking with the fifth floor.
'The people who voted for us are also progressive, but they also want effective, good government, and they're not seeing that,' the Progressive Caucus co-chair said.
It also could be a reflection of the headwinds Johnson faces with voters and well-funded political groups. Even the most ideologically strident alderman becomes a political pragmatist if he thinks tying himself to an unpopular mayor could hurt his own reelection prospects.
Vasquez, often a Johnson critic who recently became chair of the aldermanic Latino Caucus, took part last fall in a small, informal group that sought to steer the city's troubled budget amid gridlock. He called them the 'Sensibles.'
Aldermen have also been more willing to use procedural powers to impede opponents. Legislative underdogs have been quick to 'defer and publish' ordinances set to face a final vote or send newly introduced ordinances they disagree with to the Rules Committee.
The tactics can delay votes and discussion by weeks or months. Johnson allies have recently used such moves to stall a vote on a teen curfew, while mayoral opponents used them to hold up his 'green social housing' and 'cumulative impact' ordinances.
Waguespack said ordinances have been tanked that way more than ever before in his five terms. He said the process makes the whole council look 'ridiculous' and likened it to plumbing taking sewage away.
'It's like everything goes into a whirlpool,' Waguespack said. 'It all gets mushed together. And then flushed out of sight.'
Such 'political gamesmanship' has become more common, according to the body's longest-serving member, Vice Mayor Ald. Walter Burnett.
Burnett, who endorsed runoff candidate Paul Vallas in the 2023 mayoral election but has proved to be one of Johnson's best allies, argued the apparent aldermanic independence is often inspired by a desire not to legislate, but to politically damage Johnson.
'I wish people would work more on getting things done than doing politics,' he said. 'Some of the stuff that they go against or try to procedurally stop is good stuff, it's just that they just don't want the mayor to get a win.'
Like others aligned with Johnson, Burnett often likens the current moment to the Council Wars of the 1980s, when a majority bloc of white aldermen blocked Mayor Washington's every move. But while Johnson faces committed, combative opposition, there is no commensurate bloc of votes large enough to consistently thwart him.
When they aren't using procedure to spar, aldermen are also more frequently turning to piercing words, like when Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez appeared to call Ald. Bill Conway a 'white supremacist' during a February debate over a controversial pro-Palestinian puppet. Moments later, after he was kicked out of the meeting, Sigcho-Lopez apologized and said he had called the debate, not his colleague, 'white supremacist.'
The most recent harsh exchange occurred last month after the fatal shooting of two Washington, D.C., Israeli Embassy employees by a Chicago man. Ald. Raymond Lopez posted a photo online that he insinuated showed Johnson and progressive aldermen posing with the shooter, captioning it 'birds of a feather.'
When Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez confirmed the photo actually showed one of her staffers, not the shooter, and asked for an apology, Lopez doubled down on his argument that stances of City Hall progressives had caused the shooting. Rodriguez-Sanchez sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lopez, who also recently suggested in a social media post that the mayor should be arrested for Chicago's immigration policies.
Ald. Matt O'Shea said he now often finds himself 'embarrassed to say I'm a member of the City Council' because of episodes like that.
'You give people an excuse to not vote when this is what we have representing us. We don't have people who have opposite viewpoints sitting down, negotiating, trying to find compromise,' he said. 'It's really frustrating at times with this group, with an unwillingness to lay down your weapons.'
O'Shea also criticized 'an utter lack of involvement' from some aldermen who do not engage in shaping legislation, including from aldermen like him who regularly disagree with Johnson.
'If you're just going to be a no vote about anything this mayor or any other mayor has, then let's just be a straight shooter and say 'I don't like this guy. I'm going back to my neighborhood to say I fought everything,'' he said. 'But don't pretend like 'I wanted to work with you.''
The division on display in the City Council was there before behind closed doors, Ald. Matt Martin argued. But it is now more out in the open and 'principled,' he said.
Past aldermen were focused on the 'minutiae' of their community and happy to defer on citywide issues to mayors, he said. Many of those nuts-and-bolts ward-level services like trash pickup, tree trimming and pothole repair are now centralized through citywide street grid planning and the 311 service request system.
'Increasingly, I don't think that we're in a position where we can just defer to what a department or what the mayor's office proposes,' he said. 'And I don't think it, at the end of the day, matters who is the mayor.'
Echoing the reform-oriented alderman's optimism, Ramanathan called the trend of aldermen more strongly shaping legislation 'healthy for democracy.' As debates revolve less around the mayor, aldermen are more responsive to other influences, like labor unions, he said.
The 'simpler time' of commanding mayors is over for now, and things would not be the same as they once were even if Richard M. Daley could be plucked from the past and put into power, he said.
'It can feel difficult because it's new and unusual,' Ramanathan said. 'But if we want to have a politics that isn't dominated by one person and one office, then I think it's important for us to all build the habits of legislation that isn't filtered through the mayor's office.'
Early last month, Johnson, who has cast three rare tie-breaker votes and come close to issuing the first veto in decades, likened dealing with dissenters to being at a Thanksgiving dinner, where there is sometimes disagreement on what to make.
'There are a few family members that I wish would stop bringing things,' he joked. 'Mayor Johnson is not solely responsible for all of the success, no more than am I responsible for all the challenges, but we are all responsible.'
Some aldermen want a better seat. Several are toying with the idea of formally taking more power from the mayor in permanent ways.
Ald. Marty Quinn is pushing an ordinance that would require city bonds to be approved with a two-thirds majority vote, a far higher council threshold for the mayor to meet than the current simple majority.
'If we are serious about being co-equal, that's the way it should be,' he said. 'Long after I'm gone and Mayor Johnson is gone, this is a good precedent.'
Still, Quinn called the council's movement toward independence 'baby steps,' not 'leaps.' Some aldermen are eyeing a bigger jump.
Ald. Gilbert Villegas is trying to build support for Chicago to install a city charter clarifying aldermanic and mayoral powers. Such a charter could give aldermen new tools to vet laws or shape budgets and would likely remove mayors from their role presiding over City Council meetings, he said.
'The City Council is not armed and doesn't have the proper staff and tools necessary to be the co-equal branch to the executive,' Villegas said. 'This is a structure in order to make sure there's an equal playing level for both.'
And as aldermen weigh locking in more powers for the council, the pushback Johnson may face from mayoral hopefuls could rise as the 2027 election approaches.
Conway, like several of his colleagues, is rumored to be weighing a mayoral bid. He has raised over $342,000 this year in campaign contributions, according to his latest filings. Asked if he is running, he said he is focused on the current moment.
He thinks it will be hard for Johnson to pass a budget next year amid what he sees as a leadership vacuum and a lack of aldermanic trust in the mayor marked by 'just a whole lot of water under that bridge.'
'That void cannot go unfilled. So, City Council will have to fill it,' Conway said. 'If the mayor's office can't get it over the finish line, we are gonna have to find a way.'