Only 14% Support! Chicago Is FIRING Their Mayor!

[00:00:00]A new poll shows Mayor Brandon Johnson faces an uphill battle if he decides to seek re-election. The University of Chicago survey released today shows 54% of Chicagoans disapprove of the way Johnson is handling his job as mayor and just 14% of those pled say they want him to run for a second term. America 14%.

[00:00:21]That's not his disapproval number. It's not his enemies. 14% of Chicago residents want this man to run again.

[00:00:28]and he's still out here acting like the decision is up in the air. Meanwhile, the school district is laying off central office staff, [music] freezing spending midyear and asking the teachers union to pray with them about it in February. [music] This is a city with a former grade school teacher running it like it's 2019. And he's got a substitute lesson taped to the white board.

[00:00:56]Mayor Brandon Johnson still thinks that there's a path forward for his millionaire and billionaires tax. He wants to use that money to help make up for a $130 million budget shortfall.

[00:01:06]>> What is up guys? Tyson Dela Cruz here.

[00:01:08]Thank you so much for rocking with me.

[00:01:09]Let's sit with the University of Chicago poll for a second because the topline number is the least absolute least embarrassing part of it. the case of Mayor Johnson, it has hovered in the vicinity of 25% for the five quarters in which we've asked the question this quarter it comes out around 23% even true on what might you might stereotypically think of as his core constituency say black Chicagoans on the south side even their approval rate is quite low and in every single one of those we're finding that his disapproval rate far outweighs his approval rate 23% overall approval he held that for five straight quarters Five straight quarters. You guys, that is not a bad month. This is a settled number. And here's the part that should actually worry Brandon Mohawk Johnson.

[00:01:55]They broke the data down by race, by income, by age, by region of the city.

[00:02:01]And get this, they could not find one single group where he's above water. Not a single group. Not one of them. Not his own base, not on the southside, not with young voters, nobody. About 57% of people say they don't want him to run.

[00:02:17]About 14% of people say they do. And that leaves about 30% of people who say they have no opinion.

[00:02:22]>> Go ahead and read that math slowly because it's the funniest thing about this entire story. If Brandon Mohawk Johnson converted every single undecided voter left in Chicago, every on the fence voter, if you would, every I don't have an opinion yet type voter, he'd be sitting at 40%.

[00:02:43]That, my friends, is the ceiling. That is not the floor. The absolute best case scenario, everybody loves me now scenario tops out below half, below 50%.

[00:02:54]And this man reportedly still weighing in on whether they'll run or not. Buddy, listen. Brandon Mohawk Johnson, the professor with the PhD, just sat down and did the math on camera. I think it's time you sit this one out, homie. Now, let's leave the polling booth and go look at the actual book because the numbers is way, way, way worse than his approval rating. Okay. Chicago public schools officials explain why they are laying off hundreds of employees within the district.

[00:03:22]162 central office staffers are going to be laid off for this coming school year.

[00:03:28]So right now there's going to be five furlow days for all CPS employees starting in January. That's going to be in the second semester. So those are going to happen on noninstructional days. So there's also going to be a district-wide midyear spending freeze.

[00:03:42]162 jobs gone. Five furlow days. That's 5 days. and every single CPS employee that doesn't get paid, it's mandatory.

[00:03:51]It's built into the calendar. So, you got to take 5 days off, unpaid, built into your calendar, and a midyear spending freeze, which is basically the district-wide version of turning off your data plan on the 20th of every month. The Chicago Teachers Union sent Fox Chicago a statement saying up to 1,000 of their members are going to be laid off and several positions are just not going to be filled. a thousand teachers in a district that's spending almost $10 billion a year. Somewhere in Chicago right now, there's a fourth grade classroom that's about to have 34 kids in it. And one absolutely exhausted teacher who has already been told that they're raised for next year is a thank you service card in a simple envelope on an email or something like that and a furlow 5-day calendar mandate. Okay.

[00:04:43]Meanwhile, the mayor, Brandon Mohawk Johnson, a former teacher himself, this man who stood in front of classrooms for a living, is out here. He's out here defending a millionaire tax that a coalition of his own council members already voted down once. I'm going to be absolutely straight with you guys here because CPS's own leadership actually made a real point at that press conference and it deserves a little bit of air time. Okay? The budget that we have presented is one that does its absolute best to address the very diverse needs of our students.

[00:05:14]>> However, CPS says it's adding more special education teachers and support staff as more as bilingual teachers because they said it's what students need right now.

[00:05:25]>> That is absolutely real and I'm giving it credit. CPS has 45,000 fewer students than it did in 2019. probably because a lot of people are dropping out or leaving the city in Chicago. The C19 relief money, you guys remember that the emergency federal cash that propped up a lot of these budgets in Chicago and a lot of these other blue cities and states for years has completely dried up. Aging buildings need real repair money that used to come from somewhere else. None of that is Brandon Mohawk Johnson personally inventing a crisis out of thin air here. Okay, here's what that compilation does not explain here.

[00:06:02]A thousand teacher layoffs, five unpaid furlow days, and a mid-year spending freeze while the mayor is fighting for tax increases that his own city council absolutely rejected. Instead of running a city government that lives with the money it actually has, the problem is structural. The mayor's response to the problem is the part that's actually on Brandon Mohawk Johnson. And here's the piece, my friends, that ties the school crisis directly to the city's general fund. And almost nobody's kind of connecting these two things out loud.

[00:06:32]Check it out.

[00:06:33]>> The mayor did not sign, but also did not veto this budget.

[00:06:36]>> So, that's what happened back in December. So, this is the budget we're working on. So, we're in that mid uh midpoint right now. So, here here's [clears throat] how that ended up working. So, by taking no action, the budget ended up passing. You may remember it was 6 $16.7 billion and it was supposed to close a $1.2 $2 billion budget gap which included selling Chicago's outstanding debt to collectors and selling advertising spots on city light poles and cars. However, the mayor said not one person or company has decided to buy into those proposals. Let me walk you through the actual plan that the city passed to close the billion hole. A billion dollar hole. Sell Chicagoans unpaid debt to collection agencies. That's one of the plans. and sell advertisements based on street light poles near city cars. That's the idea. Zero buyers, zero. Not one company in America wanted to buy Chicago's advertising inventory or residences bad debt. The plan to fix the $1.2 billion gap produced absolutely zero. It produced a goose egg. And the mayor's response to that specific failure was to blame the alderman who wouldn't pass his corporate head tax instead. Okay, >> we just have a few obstinate individuals that are more aligned with the interest of corporations that are ultimately stalling what could be a fullout revolution in this city.

[00:08:01]>> A revolution over the budget shortfall that his own administration created by proposing to sell debt and light pole advertisement that nobody wanted to buy.

[00:08:10]That is not a revolution, my friend.

[00:08:13]That is a garage sale filled with crap that nobody showed up to. take absolutely no action on the budget that everyone absolutely everybody, including his own administration, knew relied on revenue sources that did not exist yet.

[00:08:30]Watch the budget fail to produce the money that it promised. Then stand in a podium and call the elderman who voted against the new tax hike aligned with corporations instead of admitting and absolutely admitting the plan you didn't veto was the plan that failed. Alderman Nent Smith and Hopkins, all sitting members of the own city council, not some outside opposition, told reporters directly Johnson's administration was in charge of actually collecting the Chicagoans debt and never followed through the for the requirements the council attached when they passed it.

[00:09:04]Huh.

[00:09:05]>> His administration was the one that is in charge of administering these new revenue sources, particularly things like debt collection. That's a administrative responsibility. The legislative branch can't do anything about affecting that other than set the budget, which we've done.

[00:09:19]>> His own city council alderman just described the mayor's own administration as having dropped the ball on the one job that they're supposed to do. Not a Republican, not a critic from the outside of the building, a member of his own council, his own party. On record here, you build the fire, Brandon Johnson. The council handed you the extinguisher and you left it in the box, bro. Here's where all this actually lands for the people who live in the city of Chicago. And this is the part that isn't in the budget line item. This is your Saturday night. You ready for this? Chicago is absolutely bleeding revenue and it's bleeding residents. At the same time, it's bleeding its tax base. Remember the Chicago Bears? The Chicago Bears, an NFL team, an NFL franchise, has called Chicago home since 1921.

[00:10:09]have committed to a new stadium up in Arlington Heights, a suburb just outside city limits. That is not a rumor. It is official. Stamped sealed and delivered.

[00:10:19]Multi-year deal, property tax revenue, game day revenue, everything that comes with hosting an NFL franchise. Walking straight north. And while your tax base is walking out the door, here's what's happening on the streets that the base is supposed to fund. Every single weekend, weekend after weekend after weekend, Chicago posts shooting numbers.

[00:10:41]That would be national headlines in almost any other American city. And they're treated like it's going to rain on a Tuesday, like it's a weather report. Downtown, the actual central business hub of Chicago, part of the city that's supposed to be an economic engine, has a large group of teenagers overrunning intersections and storefrs on holiday weekends and every other weekend. the kind of viral footage that was unthinkable for any other mayor in America in a downtown corridor. At least in my opinion, it's not a coincidence.

[00:11:11]It's just Brandon Johnson's fault alone.

[00:11:14]We could talk about JB Pritsker. We can talk about Illinois as a whole. Chicago has been running this playbook for decades, but he's the guy that's holding the wheel right now. And the wheel is pointing directly into the ditch. He's a former elementary school teacher who's now running a city government with the same energy as a sub who just lost the lesson plan on day one and decided to let the class just kind of watch a movie. You remember those days? And I want you to remember this number. When you hear the next headline out of Seattle, when you hear the next headline out of New York, this is the same playbook, the same sequences, just different zip codes. It always starts with the budget that nobody like actually is managing. And it always ends with the people who can least afford it to leave being the only ones left holding the bill and holding the receipt. America, only 14% of Chicago want him back. [laughter] [laughter] 23% approval of his job right now. These are horrible numbers that m those numbers haven't moved in a year. A thousand teachers are getting laid off right now.

[00:12:30]The budget plan that was supposed to close the billion dollar gap sold exactly 0 in advertising and collected exactly 0 in debt. His own alderman said his own administration dropped the ball. The bears are gone. Shootings keep happening every single day in Chicago. in downtown Chicago. Looks like nobody's actually in charge. Chicago, you elected a substitute teacher. I'm going to rewind that back. Chicago, you elected a substitute teacher to run a 17 billion dollar operation, and he's currently deciding whether he'd like a second contract.

[00:13:12]Let me know what you guys think about this. Drop it down in the comments section down below. Smash the like button if you kindly would. Share, subscribe, and as always guys, I'll catch you on the next one.