Four Chicago news outlets have released a survey from Mason-Dixon of the unpredictable Feb. 28 nonpartisan primary for mayor, and the first media poll of the year shows five contenders locked in a tight competition for the two spots in the likely April 4 general election. Rep. Chuy García takes first with 20% as former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas enjoys a tiny 18-17 edge over incumbent Lori Lightfoot for the crucial second place spot.
Wealthy perennial candidate Willie Wilson isn’t far behind with 12%, with another 11% going to Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson. Another 18% of respondents are undecided, while none of the remaining four contenders take more than 2% each. All the candidates identify as Democrats in this dark blue city including Wilson, who voted for Trump in 2016 and ran for the Senate four years later as the candidate of the Willie Wilson Party.
We’ve seen several other polls over the last month, but just about the only thing each firm has agreed on is that no one is going to come close to taking the majority they’d need to win outright. Indeed, it was just this week that IZQ Strategies, a Democratic firm that says it conducted its poll without a client, put Vallas well in first with 25% as Johnson took second with 15%; those numbers also had Lightfoot and Garcia at 12% each, with Willson just behind with 11%.
We may be left guessing about the true state of the race until ballots are tabulated at the end of the month, though Lightfoot’s team quickly argued that Mason-Dixon’s sample is overestimating Garcia. The poll, which showed Garcia winning 56% of Latino respondents, also estimated that this demographic will form 27% of the electorate even though the city’s majority Latino precincts only made up 13% of Chicago’s total vote last November.
The poll comes at a time when the negative ads are flying all over place. While Lightfoot said last month that she wanted Vallas to be her runoff opponent, the mayor doesn’t seem to think it’s a good idea to leave him alone right now. Lightfoot recently debuted a digital ad utilizing 2009 footage of Vallas telling conservative host Jeff Berkowitz, “I will probably register as a Republican in the next primary,” “I am more of a Republican than a Democrat now,” and, “If I run for public office, then I would be running as a Republican.”
Lightfoot, like Garcia, has also accused Vallas of opposing abortion rights, though it remains to be seen if she’ll run a TV spot going after the former Chicago Public Schools CEO. Vallas, who ran for office as a Democrat in the years between that 2009 interview, responded to Garcia’s broadside by declaring, “I am a lifelong Democrat who has always been 100% pro-choice.”
Lightfoot’s allies at the 77 Committee are also running what appears to be the first negative spot anyone has leveled against Johnson, who has the support of the influential Chicago Teachers Union, though it’s not clear if it’s running on TV. This ad says that Johnson wants to “defund the police,” which the narrator says will jeopardize Chicago residents’ safety. The county commissioner, writes Politico, 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.
Lightfoot has also been running commercials for a while tying Garcia to two scandal-ridden men, former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and former Illinois state House Speaker Michael Madigan. The other contenders have largely avoided mentioning the incumbent by name in their TV spots, though they’ve argued that crime is out of control under the current leadership.
