You're right

... 'cause there is a litany of problems that I get to sink my teeth into.

So I kinda joke around that I'm a big foodie.

I'm not joking.

I'm serious about that.

But I, I do kinda joke around that there's nothing that I love more than a big, fat, delicious, juicy plate of problems that I get to sink my teeth into and wipe clean.

I did that in, as state comptroller.

[laughs]

yeah

right i would have more confidence but we're talking about mayor johnson so i do think that we are in a position where indiana now has a ton of leverage they are willing to give them anything and everything they could dream of and it becomes difficult to keep them in chicago it becomes difficult to keep them in arlington heights and it definitely becomes financially difficult when now the bears have a lot of leverage over both the city and the state.

And we're not in a position I think where, or it doesn't look like we are, where we can create enough of an incentive without really sticking it to taxpayers that would keep them here.

But look, no matter what happens in the future, we have to make sure that Chicago stays super competitive.

That no matter whether, I would love to see them stay in Illinois.

I love, of course, in Chicago, but, But realistically speaking, we can hope for the best, but we have to prepare for the worst.

And we don't mean that that's just giving up on Chicago as a sports town because we are, as part of our DNA, a sports town.

Can you explain that?

Sure

... to fully focus, um, you know, on the mayoralty.

And, um, uh, we can't afford to get it wrong a third time.

You know, we've had two unsuccessful mayors back to back, um, at a time when I've helped deliver 10 credit upgrades to the state of Illinois, having taken us out of the financial, you know, cataclysmic event that we suffered, that seven hundred and thirty-six-day budget impasse, followed by a pandemic, uh, and come out of that successfully with 10 credit upgrades.

The city of Chicago has gotten three downgrades over the last thirteen months.

I mean, it's really preposterous.

And so, you know, anyone who thinks outside of Chicago that it doesn't matter what happens to Chicago's economy is just, you know, fooling themselves.

What are you hearing from the voters in Chicago when you're out and about? What are they looking for, or does it depend on what part of the city they're from?

I'm a fairly, uh, uninhibited person, but no, I didn't.

Yes.

But she was Wonder Woman to me, you know, total badass, and, uh, she taught me how to stand up to, you know, gangbangers and bullies and stuff like that.

And the moral of the story is she did drag that guy down to his grandmother's house, and, uh, she told the grandmother what they were doing, and they walked back to our house with a bucket, soapy water, the wire brush, and she didn't let them stop until they cleaned all of that fresh paint off of our brick.

And that was my mom.

My dad, on the other hand, uh, I was about nine years old living in the suburbs 'cause we had to leave the, our community because of, of a murder that happened on our block, and my mom had just had enough and didn't want us to be the victim of a murder.

So we moved to the suburbs, and that's where I got, like, an understanding of the difference between, you know, being afraid to walk to school with the fear of getting shot, holding my brother's hand every day, having this conversation- Of let's just not make eye contact, you know, we make it to school without getting shot, uh, versus knowing what it's like to grow up in a safe environment with good public schools where the worst thing that could happen to me is a bird pooping on my head.

Okay.

Uh, my question is, given that the state is underfunding our school district, CPS, by more than a billion dollars, what will you do that's different than what previous mayors have tried or done to make sure that we get the money from the state moving forward?

So number one, I'm very proud that even when I was comptroller, I used to be, as I said, a former legislator, but as comptroller, I toured the entire state of Illinois to support the change in the funding formula so that we would be able to, uh, make sure that we're sending more money to our school districts.

Uh, the reality is that right now I know that there's...

We're going through this budget crisis situation with CPS as well, and you should know that as the mother of a child in the Chicago public school system, and frankly, besides this mayor, the only mayor, uh, or candidate for mayor running for office that has a chi- child in the system, I think that really matters because we have some serious skin in the game with our own son, and we want the system to work.

Um, having said that, I don't foresee in this budget season, I know the governor's already said that the money is not there, um, and we do need to put together enough votes at the state level to, uh, be able to secure that funding that the Chicago public school system needs.

Um, but that would require a three-fifths majority vote, and I don't believe that the suburban Democrats or any of the Republicans are going to vote to be able to put together that three-fifths majority.

So this is a real crisis that is gonna require CPS itself to look internally, uh, hopeful that you can get state funding, but there is no guarantee.

The list goes on, right? Do you feel that way as a, as a Chicagoan, and, and what would you do about that as mayor?

So what should he have done if not block the move to Arlington Heights? What should have happened there? What would you have done? Yeah, but let's...

i love that you asked that friend let's rewind that so you talked about a plan that he unveiled at the end of the legislative session and it was a complete surprise to the governor to the legislative leaders to all the members of the legislature he crafted his plan and who was standing next to him stacy davis gates so taking it back to your initial um question i think so many people ask well who's the mayor here Is it Mayor Johnson or is it, you know, Miss Gates? And why is she talking about the Bears in Springfield at a press conference? She runs him.

I think that the mayor has he is you know who his number one advisor and most important voice is and it's definitely not the people of the city of chicago and it's certainly not you know meeting with the governor and asking him for his help on moving forward on an initiative you cannot show up to springfield and that's something i would never do show up the last month or the last week of session and drop a bomb on them now that's not a plan that is like a no plan plan and it's dead on arrival on the first minute of your presentation of that plan and he's had years in which to sit down with the legislature to sit down with the governor and you keep hearing the governor come back and say there's no plan and so this is why we're where we're at if four years ago he would have sat down and said hey we've got to like make sure that we come up with a plan together.

The city of Chicago leads, but the governor has to be a part of that.

The legislature has to be a part of that because it requires a heavy lift.

The business community should have been brought to the table on this, not just the bears, but everyone who's impacted as a stakeholder and taxpayers.

And the first thing you do is sit down with the bears and tell them, we wanna help you, but we're not gonna support a plan that sticks it to our taxpayers.

What is your opinion of how that was handled and how the mayor responded?

I saw those.

In every single one of their windows.

And it was kind of like surprise unveiling.

And then in the restaurant itself, we have our normal traditional stuff.

But, you know, have you ever been in a restaurant and you see like the very traditional Mexican cut paper? Yes.

So we did our signs like that.

They were strung all through the restaurant, like if they were cut paper.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm a voice for them, a voice of common sense, a voice of mothers who don't wanna join a club, uh, that is made up of mothers who have lost their kids to gang violence.

Uh, this needs to stop.

And so we need a mayor who understands that the number one job of any mayor of any city is to provide a safe environment.

And I will not be able to tell you, Ray, even after I'm mayor, that we've done our job unless every Chicagoan in every neighborhood can say when they're talking to their friends or talking to other people, that they feel safe in this city.

'Cause you can cherry-pick crime statistics all you want, right? But at the end of the day, if you ask Chicagoans, "What are your top three concerns?" I promise you that number one or number two, no matter what neighborhood I've been in, is public safety.

People don't feel safe, and we're not really safe until people feel safe.

Talk about, you know, and I know you have to work within the constraints of Illinois, which has to be difficult when it comes to fiscal responsibility, but you've kinda helped change that around.

What got you interested in running this time?

Well, it became clear to me, number one, that we are experiencing a crisis of a financial magnitude that the closest thing I could compare it to is when I took over the state of Illinois with that financial crisis.

But there's really three major crises.

And I've really discovered this because I can feel it as a Chicagoan.

But more importantly, I've had a listening tour over the last almost year where I've heard directly from Chicagoans.

And they made it clear that we have a financial crisis, a public safety crisis, and a crisis of confidence and that the city is moving in the right direction and can never come back.

And so it is absolutely imperative that we get it right this next time.

How does that complicate your path to victory, do you think?