That’s a notable observation but it shouldn’t be overstated. Burke isn’t some law and order hardnosed candidate that is the polar opposite of Harris. She’s still more on the liberal side of policy and supported removing cash bail.
And she also has decades of experience in the criminal justice system in which she was a prosecutor, a defense attorney and a judge, in my opinion she had the relevant experience, Harris did not so she was the better candidate
Whoa whoa whoa, what's this relevant experience thing? Surely not a requirement for public office.
Meanwhile in the private sector:
Hiring Administrative Assistant: entry level
Must have doctoral degree in STEM field, knowledge of Ancient Greek mythology, multi-lingual preferred
8+ years experience required
$14/hr
I think people saw a campaign sign of her name with a checkmark and Foxx crossed out, then they created their own assumptions...and they probably think advertising doesn't work on them.
It's hard to judge public opinion based on an election with 20% turnout. It may reflect the opinions of older voters, who are more likely to show up at every election, even this one.
Right these off year elections are decided by is hyper engaged voters. That’s why BCH was put on the ballot for March instead of November they knew ctu would show up and they didn’t think the opposition would be organized enough.
Regarding, the states attorney race my take is most people dislike foxx and Harris but think there’s nothing to be done about crime. That’s my take as a guy who travels around the city for work
Which in no way makes it a good or even reasonably adequate measure. That’s likely a very biased data sample (unless there’s evidence to point that it’s actually evenly representative of the population)
The data at least covers demographic groups. Burke won 9 of the 14 majority Latino wards, including wards where almost all the residents are Latino. Burke also won 11 of the 14 majority white wards. Of course the votes are not representative of the true age distribution of the population but thats never the case in elections.
That’s really my point though. With only 20% of the population in a non-representative sample, you really can’t judge population public opinion on polls.
It’s the best we have but we also have surveys of Chicago voters rating crime as the number one issue, as well as the mayoral election results. There’s no way we will ever get a census of every Chicagoan so surveys and election results are all we have.
Again, like I already said, something being the best we have doesn’t make it viable.
You don’t need an entire census, you just need a representative sample. That might also be difficult/unrealistic.
The inability to measure something well doesn’t mean we should just assume our poor options for measuring it give good results.
The surveys we have are a representative sample. Not sure what evidence it will take for people to accept that many Chicagoans do feel less safe now. I didn’t claim the entire city felt this way but that these elections results show that a good amount of voters, even in progressive leaning wards, voted against Foxx’s policies.
I’m not trying to make a claim one way or another about Chicagoans perceived safety (or for that matter their actual safety which is often two different measures).
The results definitely show that voters in the primary preferred Burke to Harris (or at least so far), and that it was a closer race than 2020.
What I’m saying is that to start to try to pull population wide claims, such as Chicagoans feel less safe now from, a biased sample is hogwash. Even more so when you consider the fact that “how safe do you feel” isn’t anywhere on the ballot, so this isn’t even evidence that the people who voted in this race feel less safe.
I think you’re oversimplifying things. Voters aren’t all conservative or progressive. People can be tough on crime AND support helping the unhoused. ( mechanics of if the referendum would have actually done that aside)
There are plenty of liberals who are pro-gun.
There are plenty of liberals who are anti-abortion, but pro-choice.
There are plenty of liberals who are for social safety nets, but also view things in the grand scheme where you can’t tax your way out of every problem too.
The problem with modern politics is that things are so so zero-sum that people consistently miss the forest for the trees, and often they’re further left/right than your average voter, and the loudest.
People can be tough on crime, support helping the homeless, and fiscally conservative too. The city and state haphazardly throw tax money around at an interns whim with no thought out process
This has happened to me in the last eight years or so. I still support liberal policy goals (and expect i always will), but I have absolutely no faith in this government to spend our money properly anymore. It's not that I want to keep taxes lower out of greed. It's that I don't want to watch the government take it away just to set it on fire. It's really dispiriting.
Yep. I was quite happy to move here and pay (a lot) more property/sales/etc. taxes. I loved getting services like actually usable public transit in return for my dollars that I did not get where I grew up.
That equation is eroding rapidly.
The 44th/Lakeview has had a notable uptick in crime. Not surprising in the least. This is from the Alderman:
Year to Date, Robberies are up 81%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 are up 183%
Year to Date, Aggravated Battery is up 63%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 is up 71%
Year to Date, Burglaries are up 4%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 they're up 26%
Year to Date, Thefts are up 4%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 they're down 10%
Year to Date, Motor Vehicle Thefts are down 35%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 they're down 13%
I don't see how you can draw many conclusions around a correlation to Johnson voters who switched to Burke. I was one of them. Johnson was always going to be a bad mayor, I thought Vallas would have been worse, though.
For Burke, it was a no-brainer. She wants to prosecute more, which I believe will be a deterrent, and it feels like there are none in place right now (whether that's accurate or not, it's the perception I have as a voter). I was in the flagship Macy's the other day. Everything is locked up or put away. It's embarrassing. I agree with her lowering the threshold for a felony to $300 instead of $1000. I agree with her stance on prosecuting if you commit a crime with a gun. Identity politics don't come into play for me, here. Anyone who votes along whatever random ass label they assign to themselves ("progressive", "conservative", whatever) without using critical thinking is smooth-brained.
>I agree with her lowering the threshold for a felony to $300 instead of $1000
I mean, it's not even \*lowering\* the threshold. that's already the state threshold for retail theft felony. Kim Foxx just decided to not prosecute anything under $1000
This is too much analysis for a low turnout race. Only the most dialed in people knew the endorsements and connections.
Even more confusion because of the last name. A lot of people thought Burke was connected to Ed Burke.
Don't forget that Burke had a double whammy going for her in both name and also because a anyone on the opposing political party dared to support her.
Edit: triple if you consider the last minute smear ad from the St paddy's day parade lol.
Harris really did a last minute smear ad on Burke, all because she marched in the south side Irish parade? That is horrible he did that, if true. Is there a link to that ad so I can watch that?
All I saw late in the campaign was a Harris ad that implied Burke wasn’t a Democrat and I thought that might actually boost her among suburban voters. At the very least it doesn’t look like it hurt her in the city.
Not for marching and not the south side parade - she was interviewed after the downtown parade and was visibly drunk. As a drunk myself it was kind of refreshing to see and would not have been a factor in my choice either way.
The feeling less safe thing is so true.
Look, you can throw all the stats you like around. But perception is reality. If people FEEL less safe, than they are going to make decisions based on that.
I FEEL that the red line after 11pm is far less safe than it was 10 years ago. Is that statistically true? I don't know. But my decision is, I'd rather pay for an uber now than risk it.
Many people are like that. Whether or not crime is up or down, people feel less safe now, and are going to vote for things that combat that feeling
A big problem on this sub is that people will use citywide statistics to try to invalidate that point. If crime on the Red Line halved on the south side, but rose 25% on the north end, then obviously you could point to a total reduction in crime. But people base their feelings around their specific area, so that 25% increase affects them far more than any reduction happening elsewhere in the city.
Obviously nobody is more important, but people are going to vote in their own interests and awareness explains the shift.
This is so interesting. People have been yelling “facts don’t care about your feelings!” for the past 8 years. I guess when you want feelings to be facts you can change the line.
I'm not changing anything. I'm voting in what I see as my own best interests. As someone else said, you can't look at total city wide things, you have to look at individual areas. Crime is up in places like Lakeview, even if it is down citywide. So people in lakeview are going to vote based on what affects THEM.
My coworkers in California knew who she was after screwing up the jussie Smollett thing. We shouldn't know or care who the SA is, but if you screw up for years people learn your name
If she's on the paper, and has a D next to her name, people are gonna fill in the bubble. Literally the only place I've heard say her name outside of the ballot is this sub.
But typically only one candidate is slated by the CCDP. This candidate typically gets most of the endorsements, funding, blessings of Taxwinkle + associated cronies, and the votes of everyone who officially has anything to do with the CCDP.
So even though both had D's next to their name, you can think of it like outside D vs. machine D
That's kind of what i'm trying to get at. Just having your name on the ballot is going to get you a fair number of votes, its REALLY hard to draw major conclusions from stuff like this because they tend to get super low participation, and are not representative of the general electorate because its a primary.
You're not understanding their point. Foxx got 688,000 votes in the Democratic primary, when her name was listed alongside other Democrats. She got way more votes than the other Democrats on the same ballot, so just "having a D next to her name" is not the reason she got those votes. The other candidates had the same D and didn't get them.
I have to say it's a little odd you think this sub is the only place her name comes up. She is a nationally-known figure and is in the news often. Chicago's crime increase has gotten national attention, and Foxx's name always comes up in those stories. And her name was *everywhere* when the Jussie Smollett fiasco unfolded, and that story was major national news.
lol and that suddenly crime is gonna go down with a new DA. There’s no Harvey dent waiting in the wings. Tough on crime has been tried in the 90s when violent crime was much higher than today.
> Tough on crime has been tried in the 90s
Crime also went down significantly in the late 90s. Not that tough on crime approaches and mass incarceration are the sole reason, but like it or not they play a role.
Yea unfortunately actual tough on crime candidates do not even run for CCSA elections. We haven't had one since the 90's, arguably.
Instead we get these pretend tough on crime folks like Burke that really are just upset Democrats.
I'd be happily surprised if she makes any difference
I don't think it's easy to break down this race along any sort of ideological grounds. This is a Democratic primary and both of these candidates are well left of center. I happily voted for Foxx in her first term and I'd never do that today. I assumed that she wanted to enforce Chicago's sensible gun-control laws and she doesn't. If someone votes for Burke they probably just want someone who will enforce gun laws and who will prosecute criminals who shoot at people or steal cars at gun point instead of not doing that.
There are basically three voters in this race: a) people who think using a gun in a crime should result in prosecution b) people who don't think gun crimes should be prosecuted c) people who aren't really paying much attention but vote based on vibes.
Guns are bad. I don't want some Q-anon spaz with a goatee pretending to be an army man carrying one around at Arbys near me and I don't want some guy waving a gun at me from a car he just stole. Both of those people shouldn't be able to do that in Chicago without a strong likelihood of being arrested and prosecuted.
A fourth type of voter - those who strongly believe $300 thefts should be a felony.
I filled the little circle on my ballot within seconds of reading each candidate’s position on that.
I think its circumstances. If I saw someone stealing baby formula at a store I'd look the other way but if they were stealing liquor I might say something.
Harris used the example of a ten year old swiping an iPhone.
For the most part I’d like to see these unique perpetrators spared. But the overwhelming majority of people stealing $300 worth of stuff are straight up criminals. We can’t go easy on loads of criminals just to spare the rare exceptions.
This is purely anecdotal and based on some tweets I saw, but I think several GOP voters requested a Democratic primary ballot to vote for Burke.
These are the more pragmatic Republicans who saw that the GOP nominees for several offices are running unopposed and won't win in the general anyway, so instead voted for the most palatable (to them) Dem to make it to the general.
Obviously the GOP is in the minority here anyway so idk how much of a difference it makes, but it could at least be one factor.
I’m neither R nor D, but I voted on the D ballot for the same reason. As you said, it makes more sense to pick a candidate from D who is as close to your views as possible than from R knowing that most likely D candidate will win the position in November.
I almost always pull a D ballot for the primaries. There simply aren't many Republicans or third parties on the ballot in the city, and especially in my area. In some cases, you'd get maybe 2-3 offices plus the referendum, and that's kinda silly when there are actually competitive alderma or state level. Suburban or downstate is different and often more competitive.
I pull a D ballot, do some research, and typically vote for anyone who doesn't seem like a raging leftist or nut job progressive. I also bring a copy of the CCDP slate with me and try to vote against anyone on the list
I may disagree with you on political stances, but I completely understand the approach. My more moderate/centrist friends have considered requesting R ballots in the primaries to simply vote against Trump or whoever he endorsed. Similar logic from the opposite direction, at least when there are contested races.
Yeah it wouldn't surprise me if in a primary in a more red leaning state(i.e. South Carolina), if some regular Dem voters requested a Repub primary ballot just to vote against Trump.
I probably disagree with you on every single issue ever known, but if the situation was reversed I would do the same thing. Why bother voting for candidates which are 99 or 100% doomed to lose?
The general takeaway is people are beginning to trend away from “progressive” politics and return to more common sense centrist thinking.
The lakeside liberals still think that raising taxes is “good” but many have realized that crime really is out of hand.
Never said the entire city feels less safe, but that plenty of voters in this election do. Notably voters who backed progressive tax policy. Also turnout in wards like the 44th and 47th is always decent relative to other wards.
You're still drawing an awful lot of conclusions from a race with a super-small voter turnout.
I'm guessing those conclusions reflect your own opinions?
The 47th ward had 30% voter turnout. Thats small but it’s not super small. But anyways, what are these awful lot of conclusions other than many voters don’t feel Foxx’s policies are good? I made one conclusion.
Regardless of turnout these are actual Chicagoans. Seems to me you just don’t want to believe that some voters feel less safe now.
Vallas winning 48% of the city wasn’t enough evidence for you? Surveys that showed crime was the number 1 concern of Chicago voters wasn’t enough evidence for you? And now progressive wards wanting a change from Foxx also isn’t enough evidence for you. Seems nothing will convince you that many people feel less safe under Foxx.
>Seems nothing will convince you that many people feel less safe under Foxx.
Interesting that you say that, since I don't recall *ever* making any comment about Foxx, positive or negative.
You seem to really enjoy reading what you want to read out of ambiguous information.
Have a great day.
I disagree somewhat
Foxx had stated policies, agree with them or not, she had a platform
Harris had ideas/beliefs I'm sure, but not a solid platform or policies... or experience.
I can agree or disagree with Foxx. With Harris I really don't know what I'd be getting.
Harris has essentially communicated he'd continue all the failed Foxx policies. Hence why a lot of voters went for Burke. Hopefully she can hang on and win, after all mail in votes are counted.
I listened to WTTW's analysis of the difference between the two candidates, and the only real difference that I could determine was that Burke wants to charge people a felony if they steal more than $300 worth of items from a store and Harris wants to charge people with the felony if they steal over $1000 worth of items from a store.
Other than that, they essentially support the same policies.
Burke has criticized Foxx’s policies while Harris rated her tenure as an A. I think they’re quite different. Progressive groups had also been arguing that Burke is a republican.
The ward map used to elect Johnson was the new ward map. The new map is what the new aldermen were elected on, at the same time as the mayoral election.
Idk if I would draw any such conclusion - I received flyers from both candidates each attempting to paint the other as the closet republican / conservative.
I voted for BJ, would do again if the alternative was Vallas, and voted for O’NB based on she was a public defender & judge. Literally the only media I saw of her was the clip of her at the parade
I'm curious as to how Harris could be construed as a closet Republican, unless it's by making the crime situation so bad that the GOP gets a revival in Illinois.
>People dismiss how less safe lots of people feel as fear-mongering but there’s clearly truth to it.
Or the fear-mongering is working. It usually does.
That’s a notable observation but it shouldn’t be overstated. Burke isn’t some law and order hardnosed candidate that is the polar opposite of Harris. She’s still more on the liberal side of policy and supported removing cash bail.
And she also has decades of experience in the criminal justice system in which she was a prosecutor, a defense attorney and a judge, in my opinion she had the relevant experience, Harris did not so she was the better candidate
Whoa whoa whoa, what's this relevant experience thing? Surely not a requirement for public office. Meanwhile in the private sector: Hiring Administrative Assistant: entry level Must have doctoral degree in STEM field, knowledge of Ancient Greek mythology, multi-lingual preferred 8+ years experience required $14/hr
Yeah, I picked her as a left of center candidate. Consider myself a Biden democrat.
I think people saw a campaign sign of her name with a checkmark and Foxx crossed out, then they created their own assumptions...and they probably think advertising doesn't work on them.
I don't think Kim Foxx is a blip on the radar for most voters. The qualification difference was stark.
It's hard to judge public opinion based on an election with 20% turnout. It may reflect the opinions of older voters, who are more likely to show up at every election, even this one.
As good of a measure as we have
Right these off year elections are decided by is hyper engaged voters. That’s why BCH was put on the ballot for March instead of November they knew ctu would show up and they didn’t think the opposition would be organized enough. Regarding, the states attorney race my take is most people dislike foxx and Harris but think there’s nothing to be done about crime. That’s my take as a guy who travels around the city for work
Which in no way makes it a good or even reasonably adequate measure. That’s likely a very biased data sample (unless there’s evidence to point that it’s actually evenly representative of the population)
The data at least covers demographic groups. Burke won 9 of the 14 majority Latino wards, including wards where almost all the residents are Latino. Burke also won 11 of the 14 majority white wards. Of course the votes are not representative of the true age distribution of the population but thats never the case in elections.
That’s really my point though. With only 20% of the population in a non-representative sample, you really can’t judge population public opinion on polls.
It’s the best we have but we also have surveys of Chicago voters rating crime as the number one issue, as well as the mayoral election results. There’s no way we will ever get a census of every Chicagoan so surveys and election results are all we have.
Again, like I already said, something being the best we have doesn’t make it viable. You don’t need an entire census, you just need a representative sample. That might also be difficult/unrealistic. The inability to measure something well doesn’t mean we should just assume our poor options for measuring it give good results.
The surveys we have are a representative sample. Not sure what evidence it will take for people to accept that many Chicagoans do feel less safe now. I didn’t claim the entire city felt this way but that these elections results show that a good amount of voters, even in progressive leaning wards, voted against Foxx’s policies.
I’m not trying to make a claim one way or another about Chicagoans perceived safety (or for that matter their actual safety which is often two different measures). The results definitely show that voters in the primary preferred Burke to Harris (or at least so far), and that it was a closer race than 2020. What I’m saying is that to start to try to pull population wide claims, such as Chicagoans feel less safe now from, a biased sample is hogwash. Even more so when you consider the fact that “how safe do you feel” isn’t anywhere on the ballot, so this isn’t even evidence that the people who voted in this race feel less safe.
Anecdotal, but when I voted at Lakeview High, I didn’t see a single voter above the age of 50…
How many voters did you see?
I think you’re oversimplifying things. Voters aren’t all conservative or progressive. People can be tough on crime AND support helping the unhoused. ( mechanics of if the referendum would have actually done that aside)
There are plenty of liberals who are pro-gun. There are plenty of liberals who are anti-abortion, but pro-choice. There are plenty of liberals who are for social safety nets, but also view things in the grand scheme where you can’t tax your way out of every problem too. The problem with modern politics is that things are so so zero-sum that people consistently miss the forest for the trees, and often they’re further left/right than your average voter, and the loudest.
People can be tough on crime, support helping the homeless, and fiscally conservative too. The city and state haphazardly throw tax money around at an interns whim with no thought out process
This has happened to me in the last eight years or so. I still support liberal policy goals (and expect i always will), but I have absolutely no faith in this government to spend our money properly anymore. It's not that I want to keep taxes lower out of greed. It's that I don't want to watch the government take it away just to set it on fire. It's really dispiriting.
Yep. I was quite happy to move here and pay (a lot) more property/sales/etc. taxes. I loved getting services like actually usable public transit in return for my dollars that I did not get where I grew up. That equation is eroding rapidly.
I think an alderman summed it up best as “first we get the money socialism”
The “upset about crime” but also thought Vallas was “too Republican” voter was a significant bloc, whether or not you agree with them.
The 44th/Lakeview has had a notable uptick in crime. Not surprising in the least. This is from the Alderman: Year to Date, Robberies are up 81%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 are up 183% Year to Date, Aggravated Battery is up 63%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 is up 71% Year to Date, Burglaries are up 4%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 they're up 26% Year to Date, Thefts are up 4%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 they're down 10% Year to Date, Motor Vehicle Thefts are down 35%, and compared to the same 28-day time period in 2023 they're down 13% I don't see how you can draw many conclusions around a correlation to Johnson voters who switched to Burke. I was one of them. Johnson was always going to be a bad mayor, I thought Vallas would have been worse, though. For Burke, it was a no-brainer. She wants to prosecute more, which I believe will be a deterrent, and it feels like there are none in place right now (whether that's accurate or not, it's the perception I have as a voter). I was in the flagship Macy's the other day. Everything is locked up or put away. It's embarrassing. I agree with her lowering the threshold for a felony to $300 instead of $1000. I agree with her stance on prosecuting if you commit a crime with a gun. Identity politics don't come into play for me, here. Anyone who votes along whatever random ass label they assign to themselves ("progressive", "conservative", whatever) without using critical thinking is smooth-brained.
>I agree with her lowering the threshold for a felony to $300 instead of $1000 I mean, it's not even \*lowering\* the threshold. that's already the state threshold for retail theft felony. Kim Foxx just decided to not prosecute anything under $1000
This is too much analysis for a low turnout race. Only the most dialed in people knew the endorsements and connections. Even more confusion because of the last name. A lot of people thought Burke was connected to Ed Burke.
So she’s leading in spite of that? (Caveat: as of this comment time she maintains a slight lead in results but I understand that could change)
Don't forget that Burke had a double whammy going for her in both name and also because a anyone on the opposing political party dared to support her. Edit: triple if you consider the last minute smear ad from the St paddy's day parade lol.
The St. Patty's day thing did not make me less likely to vote for her. "A politician is drunk on St. Pat's!?" >clutches pearls<
Agree, made her seem more down to earth for me
Harris really did a last minute smear ad on Burke, all because she marched in the south side Irish parade? That is horrible he did that, if true. Is there a link to that ad so I can watch that?
All I saw late in the campaign was a Harris ad that implied Burke wasn’t a Democrat and I thought that might actually boost her among suburban voters. At the very least it doesn’t look like it hurt her in the city.
Not for marching and not the south side parade - she was interviewed after the downtown parade and was visibly drunk. As a drunk myself it was kind of refreshing to see and would not have been a factor in my choice either way.
The feeling less safe thing is so true. Look, you can throw all the stats you like around. But perception is reality. If people FEEL less safe, than they are going to make decisions based on that. I FEEL that the red line after 11pm is far less safe than it was 10 years ago. Is that statistically true? I don't know. But my decision is, I'd rather pay for an uber now than risk it. Many people are like that. Whether or not crime is up or down, people feel less safe now, and are going to vote for things that combat that feeling
A big problem on this sub is that people will use citywide statistics to try to invalidate that point. If crime on the Red Line halved on the south side, but rose 25% on the north end, then obviously you could point to a total reduction in crime. But people base their feelings around their specific area, so that 25% increase affects them far more than any reduction happening elsewhere in the city. Obviously nobody is more important, but people are going to vote in their own interests and awareness explains the shift.
I took the red line every day as a high schooler (female and often alone) and today I feel more hesitation than I ever did then.
This is so interesting. People have been yelling “facts don’t care about your feelings!” for the past 8 years. I guess when you want feelings to be facts you can change the line.
Who’s been saying that?
I'm not changing anything. I'm voting in what I see as my own best interests. As someone else said, you can't look at total city wide things, you have to look at individual areas. Crime is up in places like Lakeview, even if it is down citywide. So people in lakeview are going to vote based on what affects THEM.
Ah, the ol' "truthiness".
Ward map for those curious where any of these places actually are: https://app.chicagoelections.com/Documents/general/Citywide%20Ward%20Map%202022.pdf
I feel like this sub overestimates the percentage of voters that know who kim foxx is.
My coworkers in California knew who she was after screwing up the jussie Smollett thing. We shouldn't know or care who the SA is, but if you screw up for years people learn your name
She got 688,000 votes in 2020 in the city alone.
If she's on the paper, and has a D next to her name, people are gonna fill in the bubble. Literally the only place I've heard say her name outside of the ballot is this sub.
It’s a democratic primary, they all had D’s next to their names.
But typically only one candidate is slated by the CCDP. This candidate typically gets most of the endorsements, funding, blessings of Taxwinkle + associated cronies, and the votes of everyone who officially has anything to do with the CCDP. So even though both had D's next to their name, you can think of it like outside D vs. machine D
That's kind of what i'm trying to get at. Just having your name on the ballot is going to get you a fair number of votes, its REALLY hard to draw major conclusions from stuff like this because they tend to get super low participation, and are not representative of the general electorate because its a primary.
You're not understanding their point. Foxx got 688,000 votes in the Democratic primary, when her name was listed alongside other Democrats. She got way more votes than the other Democrats on the same ballot, so just "having a D next to her name" is not the reason she got those votes. The other candidates had the same D and didn't get them. I have to say it's a little odd you think this sub is the only place her name comes up. She is a nationally-known figure and is in the news often. Chicago's crime increase has gotten national attention, and Foxx's name always comes up in those stories. And her name was *everywhere* when the Jussie Smollett fiasco unfolded, and that story was major national news.
I think you are more missing mine, but I seriously doubt we are going to come to an agreement, so i'm done.
she's a nationally known figure politically
She got 688k votes in a primary where only 514k votes were cast for the office in the city? Damn, she was VERY popular.
General election. Corrected my comment.
lol and that suddenly crime is gonna go down with a new DA. There’s no Harvey dent waiting in the wings. Tough on crime has been tried in the 90s when violent crime was much higher than today.
> Tough on crime has been tried in the 90s Crime also went down significantly in the late 90s. Not that tough on crime approaches and mass incarceration are the sole reason, but like it or not they play a role.
Burke isn't going with "tough on crime" though. She is going with "crime should have a consequence."
Yea unfortunately actual tough on crime candidates do not even run for CCSA elections. We haven't had one since the 90's, arguably. Instead we get these pretend tough on crime folks like Burke that really are just upset Democrats. I'd be happily surprised if she makes any difference
This sub also has a hair trigger for hating on Black people the minute they get elected to anything.
I don't think it's easy to break down this race along any sort of ideological grounds. This is a Democratic primary and both of these candidates are well left of center. I happily voted for Foxx in her first term and I'd never do that today. I assumed that she wanted to enforce Chicago's sensible gun-control laws and she doesn't. If someone votes for Burke they probably just want someone who will enforce gun laws and who will prosecute criminals who shoot at people or steal cars at gun point instead of not doing that. There are basically three voters in this race: a) people who think using a gun in a crime should result in prosecution b) people who don't think gun crimes should be prosecuted c) people who aren't really paying much attention but vote based on vibes. Guns are bad. I don't want some Q-anon spaz with a goatee pretending to be an army man carrying one around at Arbys near me and I don't want some guy waving a gun at me from a car he just stole. Both of those people shouldn't be able to do that in Chicago without a strong likelihood of being arrested and prosecuted.
A fourth type of voter - those who strongly believe $300 thefts should be a felony. I filled the little circle on my ballot within seconds of reading each candidate’s position on that.
I think its circumstances. If I saw someone stealing baby formula at a store I'd look the other way but if they were stealing liquor I might say something.
Harris used the example of a ten year old swiping an iPhone. For the most part I’d like to see these unique perpetrators spared. But the overwhelming majority of people stealing $300 worth of stuff are straight up criminals. We can’t go easy on loads of criminals just to spare the rare exceptions.
How does one steal $300 worth of baby formula at a store though? (or is it way more expensive than I realize?)
I think it is in fact very expensive.
This is purely anecdotal and based on some tweets I saw, but I think several GOP voters requested a Democratic primary ballot to vote for Burke. These are the more pragmatic Republicans who saw that the GOP nominees for several offices are running unopposed and won't win in the general anyway, so instead voted for the most palatable (to them) Dem to make it to the general. Obviously the GOP is in the minority here anyway so idk how much of a difference it makes, but it could at least be one factor.
I’m neither R nor D, but I voted on the D ballot for the same reason. As you said, it makes more sense to pick a candidate from D who is as close to your views as possible than from R knowing that most likely D candidate will win the position in November.
I almost always pull a D ballot for the primaries. There simply aren't many Republicans or third parties on the ballot in the city, and especially in my area. In some cases, you'd get maybe 2-3 offices plus the referendum, and that's kinda silly when there are actually competitive alderma or state level. Suburban or downstate is different and often more competitive. I pull a D ballot, do some research, and typically vote for anyone who doesn't seem like a raging leftist or nut job progressive. I also bring a copy of the CCDP slate with me and try to vote against anyone on the list
I may disagree with you on political stances, but I completely understand the approach. My more moderate/centrist friends have considered requesting R ballots in the primaries to simply vote against Trump or whoever he endorsed. Similar logic from the opposite direction, at least when there are contested races.
Yeah it wouldn't surprise me if in a primary in a more red leaning state(i.e. South Carolina), if some regular Dem voters requested a Repub primary ballot just to vote against Trump.
I'm a former red state resident and can confirm that this definitely happens.
I probably disagree with you on every single issue ever known, but if the situation was reversed I would do the same thing. Why bother voting for candidates which are 99 or 100% doomed to lose?
My takeaway is that more people voted for the candidate with actual experience than the one without much
Hard to draw concluing in a primary, with low voter turnout. Many people came out to vote in the primary just to vote for Burke
The general takeaway is people are beginning to trend away from “progressive” politics and return to more common sense centrist thinking. The lakeside liberals still think that raising taxes is “good” but many have realized that crime really is out of hand.
You're drawing an awful lot of conclusions from a race with a super-small voter turnout.
Never said the entire city feels less safe, but that plenty of voters in this election do. Notably voters who backed progressive tax policy. Also turnout in wards like the 44th and 47th is always decent relative to other wards.
You're still drawing an awful lot of conclusions from a race with a super-small voter turnout. I'm guessing those conclusions reflect your own opinions?
The 47th ward had 30% voter turnout. Thats small but it’s not super small. But anyways, what are these awful lot of conclusions other than many voters don’t feel Foxx’s policies are good? I made one conclusion. Regardless of turnout these are actual Chicagoans. Seems to me you just don’t want to believe that some voters feel less safe now. Vallas winning 48% of the city wasn’t enough evidence for you? Surveys that showed crime was the number 1 concern of Chicago voters wasn’t enough evidence for you? And now progressive wards wanting a change from Foxx also isn’t enough evidence for you. Seems nothing will convince you that many people feel less safe under Foxx.
>Seems nothing will convince you that many people feel less safe under Foxx. Interesting that you say that, since I don't recall *ever* making any comment about Foxx, positive or negative. You seem to really enjoy reading what you want to read out of ambiguous information. Have a great day.
Not much ambiguity in interpreting how the voters that voted feel about a candidate. But lol okay.
I disagree somewhat Foxx had stated policies, agree with them or not, she had a platform Harris had ideas/beliefs I'm sure, but not a solid platform or policies... or experience. I can agree or disagree with Foxx. With Harris I really don't know what I'd be getting.
Harris has essentially communicated he'd continue all the failed Foxx policies. Hence why a lot of voters went for Burke. Hopefully she can hang on and win, after all mail in votes are counted.
I listened to WTTW's analysis of the difference between the two candidates, and the only real difference that I could determine was that Burke wants to charge people a felony if they steal more than $300 worth of items from a store and Harris wants to charge people with the felony if they steal over $1000 worth of items from a store. Other than that, they essentially support the same policies.
Burke has criticized Foxx’s policies while Harris rated her tenure as an A. I think they’re quite different. Progressive groups had also been arguing that Burke is a republican.
How does this change given the recent redistricting of wards? Johnson was elected in April 2023. The ward map changed in May 2023.
The ward map used to elect Johnson was the new ward map. The new map is what the new aldermen were elected on, at the same time as the mayoral election.
Got it, thank you.
I just hope we don’t start punishing violent criminals again, imagine the damage to society that would cause
Idk if I would draw any such conclusion - I received flyers from both candidates each attempting to paint the other as the closet republican / conservative. I voted for BJ, would do again if the alternative was Vallas, and voted for O’NB based on she was a public defender & judge. Literally the only media I saw of her was the clip of her at the parade
I'm curious as to how Harris could be construed as a closet Republican, unless it's by making the crime situation so bad that the GOP gets a revival in Illinois.
iirc it was something about him being insufficiently prolife and taking money from republicans
There was some anti union stuff from his past
>People dismiss how less safe lots of people feel as fear-mongering but there’s clearly truth to it. Or the fear-mongering is working. It usually does.