Mayor Brandon Johnson’s City Council struggles showed up again Thursday, this time in the form of a ticking clock and empty chairs.
The mayor had hoped to reshuffle the council members who hold the reins of the body’s powerful committees. But hours after aldermen were set to meet and vote on the matter, they were still buzzing around City Hall’s backrooms — a sign that the deal Johnson wanted was falling apart.
His reorganization plan ultimately never came up for a vote Thursday as aldermen met for the first time since July to hammer through a backload of policy.
Johnson could not satisfy the thorniest question in Chicago politics, posed this time by the council’s Black Caucus and Latino Caucus: “Where’s mine?”
The mayor had planned to give five aldermen various promotions to fill holes left by the retirement of close ally former Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. But the fragile plan his administration had tried to sell aldermen on Wednesday fell apart, leaving dozens of spectators in the City Council chambers waiting for hours as negotiations continued, to no avail, up on the Fifth Floor.
When aldermen finally began meeting, they quickly and unceremoniously approved the appointment of Walter “Red” Burnett to lead the 27th Ward. The 29-year-old took the City Council seat held for almost three decades by his now-retired father.
But a broader re-shuffling got shelved. Several aldermen on Wednesday said Johnson wanted to make progressive Ald. Daniel La Spata chair of the powerful Zoning Committee.
Ald. Andre Vásquez, 40th, would then have taken La Spata’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee chairmanship, while Ald. Jessie Fuentes, 26th, would have snagged Vásquez’s spot leading the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Committee, multiple sources said Wednesday.
Veteran Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th, would have become Johnson’s vice mayor, and Ald. David Moore, 17th, would have taken Mitts’ position as chair of the Contracting Oversight and Equity Committee.
None of that got voted on Thursday, and council members said Johnson couldn’t line up the votes as Black and Latino aldermen told him they felt like they got short shrift in the plan.