Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s newest commercial for the Feb. 28 nonpartisan primary goes after Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson for the first time, though her allied PAC started running spots against him last week.
Lightfoot’s narrator, after once again linking Rep. Chuy Garcia to “crypto crooks and indicted politicians,” accuses Johnson of pushing “job crushing new taxes and dangerous defunding of police.” Politico recently wrote that the county commissioner says “he would like to see the agency’s resources moved to other areas, especially publicly funded mental health centers,” but he’s avoided saying he wants to “defund” the police department. The ad avoids going after Paul Vallas, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO whom Lightfoot says she wants to face in a runoff.
Johnson, who has the backing of the influential Chicago Teachers Union, didn’t attract much support in many polls before mid-January, but several more recent surveys show him in contention for one of the two spots in the likely April runoff. So far no one else appears to have aired any ads against him, though that could change in the final two weeks.
A pair of new polls, however, offer Johnson some of his worst numbers in weeks. A new firm called 1983 Labs, which says it's not affiliated with anyone running, has Lightfoot at 15% as Vallas edges wealthy perennial candidate Willie Wilson 13-12 for second. Garcia is at 10% while Johnson and activist Ja'Mal Green are deadlocked 7-7. The group’s late January survey had Lightfoot taking 16%, while back then it was Wilson who led Vallas 14-10 as Johnson grabbed fourth with 9%.
Northwestern University, meanwhile, has released its first survey of the race from BSP Research, but it finds quite a different order of candidates. The school shows Vallas taking 23% among likely voters, with Garcia narrowly leading Lightfoot 16-15 for second. Wilson isn’t far behind with 12%, while Johnson is at 8%.
How can you tell when a poll is actually high quality? Natalie Jackson, research director at PRRI, joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot to discuss that and more. Jackson tells us the indicators she looks for to determine whether a survey is worth taking seriously, what she thinks the future of polling aggregation ought to look like, and why white evangelical Christians are the real outliers when it comes to religious groups' views on abortion.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also break down Democrats' big special election victories in Pennsylvania; new efforts by progressives to pick their preferred GOP opponents in two key Wisconsin races; the first true retirement from the House this cycle; and a proposal to increase the size of the House, which has been capped at 435 members for more than a century.