CHICAGO (CN) — Bernie Sanders spoke at a rally at the University of Illinois Chicago Thursday night in support of Cook County Commissioner and progressive mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson.
Johnson is facing the more conservative Paul Vallas in a runoff mayoral election set for April 4.
"I have absolute confidence that if we stand together ... we can create the kind of city the people of Chicago deserve," Sanders said after the rally began around 7 p.m.
The 81-year-old independent Vermont senator and two-time presidential hopeful — self-described as a democratic socialist —has become a figurehead for many in the U.S. whose politics run to the left of the Democratic mainstream. His appearance at Thursday's rally comes as the Johnson campaign prepares for an uncertain election day.
Johnson and Vallas were the top two choices in a Feb. 28 primary election that saw centrist liberal incumbent Lori Lightfoot dethroned. She was the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose reelection after serving a full first term. Though Johnson may have handily made the runoff, recent polling puts him either in a dead heat with Vallas or trailing by several points.
"This is going to be a close election," Sanders acknowledged Thursday.
The rally's venue at the University of Illinois Chicago was no coincidence, as Johnson will likely need solid youth turnout to win on Tuesday. A survey published earlier this week by Chicago's Northwestern University shows he leads with voters aged 18–29, contrasting with Vallas' 30-plus point lead among elderly voters.
"I've never been so excited to vote for a mayor," Chicago musician Tasha said on stage as she opened the event, urging the mostly under-40 crowd to go vote.
The runoff has also pitted many of the city's Black neighborhoods and progressive labor unions, who are behind Johnson, against the wealthier white communities, police and businesses behind Vallas. Johnson enjoys endorsements from a number of national progressive figures — Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Reverend Al Sharpton, hip-hop artist Common and Sanders himself — but Vallas has support from longstanding local politicians including Democratic Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.
Vallas has also won endorsements from 19 of Chicago's 50 city councilors, compared to Johnson's ten.
Endorsements and coalition-building are major electoral factors in Chicago, a city composed of 77 politically and culturally distinct neighborhoods. Johnson's hope is to counter the quantity of Vallas' endorsements with the quality of his own, such as that recently offered by his defeated mayoral rival and Chicago Democratic heavyweight, Illinois 4th District Congressman Jesus "Chuy" Garcia.
But not even Garcia, who has been a mainstay of Chicago politics since the 1980s, can bring the energy of a Bernie Sanders appearance. The Vermont senator took the stage to thunderous applause and chants of "Bernie!"
"What this campaign is about is bringing the working class together," Sanders said toward the end of his speech, before introducing Johnson.
"The enemy of labor is the enemy of the people," Johnson called back to Sanders after his introduction, in a nod to both men's pro-union politics.
Democratic Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez and Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr., also spoke in support of Johnson at the rally. Both urged the crowd to vote, canvass and otherwise work to make a Johnson mayorship a reality. MLK III invoked his father several times over the course of his speech, saying Johnson's candidacy reflected MLK Jr.'s work during the civil rights movement.
"He's going to be looking down on Chicago on Tuesday," MLK III said of his father.
Despite leaning on his speakers' progressive bonafides, Johnson has tracked to the center since his unexpected win in February on the issue of crime and policing. He said in 2020 that defunding the police was "a real actual political goal," and prior to Feb. 28 maintained that Chicago's ever-increasing police budget, currently about $1.9 billion, had not made the city or its people safer. In the weeks since the primary election, he has publicly said multiple times that he would not move to defund the police as mayor, and that he supports qualified immunity — the controversial protections against criminal and civil accusations police enjoy while on the job.
