Chicago City Wire

Attorney Doug Ibendahl is highlighting the Chicago Teachers Union's (CTU) all-out effort to get Brandon Johnson elected as mayor of Chicago.

The union voted to raise member dues by $8 per month through June of 2023 to support Johnson’s candidacy.

“Unbelievable, or maybe not so hard to believe," Ibendahl said in a Facebook post. "The Chicago Teachers Union just raised dues $8 per month per member for the sole purpose of pouring even more cash into the Chicago mayoral runoff campaign of its puppet Brandon Johnson. (If you aren't familiar, Johnson is a true Marxist who makes Lori Lightfoot look like Ronald Reagan in comparison.) Paul Vallas is the only serious choice in the April 4 runoff.”

Johnson, Cook County commissioner for the 1st District, recently received another $1.5 million from the Chicago Teacher’s Union. Of the nearly $5 million donated to Johnson’s campaign, approximately 65% has come from government-sector unions, a recent Illinois Policy report said. Johnson is also employed by the CTU, which has paid him over $390,000 for being a “legislative coordinator.”

Illinois Policy elevated CTU member comments on the issue.

“CTU’s rank-and-file members have for weeks publicly protested their leadership’s doublespeak on the ethics of their political spending habits,” Illinois Policy said in a February Twitter post.

CTU members have protested the decision by union leadership to spend dues money on electoral politics.

“Not even a vote??” one member questioned the decision, responding in the Twitter post.

Another member answered, “Forget about the vote--they didn't even bother to let delegates know they were doing this! They just did it. I wonder if Trustees even knew?”

Still another requested that an audit be conducted.

“I would like to request a full external audit of all accounts,” the CTU member said. “The last financial manager has been on leave for 6 months and resigned. How much in union dues has been ‘borrowed’ for PAC?”

Paul Vallas, the top vote-getter in the Feb. 28 mayoral race, was formerly the head of Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In early 2022, he said the CTU has too much control over the lives of Chicago’s children, calling the union’s influence an “almost totalitarian school system,” the Chicago City Wire reported.

Vallas, a South Side native who grew up in the Roseland neighborhood, was CPS’s chief from 1995 to 2001. He has been critical of the school’s leadership in recent years, noting that the union has been radicalized.

"They [the CTU] decided to wrap themselves in the mantle of the progressive movement,” he told Chicago’s Morning Answer. "That's why a lot of times they are pursuing things in negotiations that are totally unrelated to the basic responsibilities of the schools which are to provide quality education, to keep these buildings open.”

Vallas has called for CPS to be broken down into more manageable units.