Chicago mayor accused of conflict of interest after refusing to resign from education role

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has been accused of a conflict of interest for refusing to resign from a role that gives him a personal interest in the Chicago Teachers Union, reported the Chicago Tribune.

Ben Felton, the hiring chief for Chicago Public Schools, "wrote a memo less than two months after the mayor’s May 2023 inauguration documenting conversations Felton had with Johnson’s deputy mayor for education, Jen Johnson, about their leaves from the Chicago Teachers Union. Union members can sometimes take leaves of absence to take other jobs and return later," according to the report.

"In the memo, dated June 28, 2023, Felton wrote that he told Deputy Mayor Johnson, who is not related to Mayor Johnson, that 'it was potentially a conflict of interest for Mayor Johnson and Deputy Mayor Johnson to remain on a CTU leave from CPS.'"

Specifically, Felton wrote, “My primary concern is that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor would be able to guarantee future employment with CPS if they chose to return to the district, as our current practice is to place employees returning from a CTU leave into the reassigned teacher pool.”

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Nonetheless, the mayor, who has since made a number of school board appointments, did not step down from the position at that time. The deputy mayor said that the mayor “did not want to leave his position so as to signal his support for education and teachers.”

Johnson unseated the broadly unpopular former mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in a tough contest that also pitted him against Paul Vallas, a more centrist candidate who focused on law enforcement. Johnson had the backing of the Chicago Teachers Union.

All of this comes at a moment when the Democratic Party is more broadly being forced to reevaluate its local government strategy, as big city mayors around the country, mostly from that party, have been largely unpopular for years; some commentators argue this contributed to the party's erosion with nonwhite voters in the 2024 election, which helped Donald Trump secure victory.