MORE OF THE SAME

You Can’t Throw the Bums Out if You’ve Voted With Your Feet

Brandon Johnson’s victory in Chicago shows the city has lost the political base for sensible reforms.

 

By Allysia Finley

 

The Wall Street Journal 

April 9, 2023

 

There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation, as Adam Smith once observed. The same could be said of America’s big Democratic-run cities. Brandon Johnson’s victory in last week’s Chicago mayoral race is a reminder that no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse.

Chicago is functionally bankrupt. Its high crime and taxes are driving away businesses like Citadel, Boeing and Tyson Foods. Despite some of the highest property taxes in the country, its pension funds are in a death spiral. Scads of people are moving out. A net 175,000 people left Cook County between 2020 and 2022.

Mr. Johnson’s margin of victory was about 20,000 votes. How many of the city’s expats would have voted for moderate reformer Paul Vallas? Therein lies an enormous problem for Chicago and other big cities: Left-wing policies are driving away the types of voters and businesses needed for a course correction.

Between 2020 and 2022, about 71,000 people on net left San Francisco—nearly 10% of its population. During the same period some 503,000 moved out of New York City—about four times the population of Topeka, Kan. High levels of out-migration amount to a political as well as economic brain drain. Cities are losing the voters who keep their leaders from going off the rails.

California’s Proposition 47 in 2014 downgraded many felonies to misdemeanors, making it harder to keep criminals behind bars. New York’s bail law likewise hamstrings local law enforcement. Pensions contractually guaranteed by state courts make it hard for cities to retain cops over 50, who are usually eligible to retire. Police departments are struggling to replace them.

 

Texas' governor sent state troopers to help Austin Pd enforce the law because of that city's critical shortage of police officers

Young people don’t want to join law enforcement for political reasons, and many would fail a drug test. As an act of public philanthropy, crypto tycoon Chris Larsen has spent $600,000 on a campaign to recruit young people to the San Francisco police force.

While America’s big cities may be reliving the crime and economic malaise of the 1970s, their problems today will be harder to solve. The shift to remote work during the pandemic has made workers and businesses more mobile, shrinking the tax base and the political base for reformers like Mr. Vallas.

Democratic statehouses have also moved left and contribute as much to cities’ problem as local elected officials. A state financial control board helped turn New York around following its flirtation with bankruptcy during the ’70s. But will the incorrigible tax-and-spending addicts in Springfield impose discipline in Chicago?

Public unions, and especially the teachers unions, have augmented their control of the Democratic Party and formed an unholy alliance with the woke left. The result: less-informed citizens who see the ruin around them and vote for more of the same.