CTU/SEIU split over Chicago school board elections
Doesn't bode well for the mayor's reelection bid.
This Week’s Hitting Left
If you missed Friday’s show with my guest, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. we talked about how she’s living in MAGA’s head, rent-free, even as a private citizen. We also discussed her ICE Accountability Project, and the pros and cons of Chicago’s new elected school board. You can listen to it here.
Chicago’s First Elected School Board
Lightfoot and I agreed that what was originally envisioned as a fundamental democratic reform has, in many ways, morphed into an oversized, divisive playground for corporate interests.
From my outsider vantage point, the new board’s structure has opened the door to big-money PACs and corporate campaign donors who are promoting privatization and union busting. It has become an entry point into city politics for Republicans and a source of further division in the city’s once-potent labor movement.
The upcoming elections have become the center of another clash between our two powerhouse school unions. CTU and SEIU have formally split over the race for school board president, with SEIU endorsing Jessica Biggs and CTU backing Hilario Dominguez. That would be okay and even normal if not for the level of internecine warfare and name-calling that has broken out to such a degree it’s going to be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again when the election madness is over.
SEIU Local 73 endorsed Biggs on July 23–24, praising her experience as a CPS principal and current board member. In a news release, SEIU officials lauded Biggs, a current school board member and former CPS principal who is now working for the nonprofit Southwest Organizing Project. They described her as a “builder of coalitions” and someone who has worked in “classrooms, hallways and communities.”
“She doesn’t just talk about equity, she’s built it, school by school and block by block on the Southwest Side,” said Dian Palmer, president of SEIU Local 73, the chapter that represents most of SEIU’s CPS employees.
But CTU leaders immediately blasted Biggs, a former CPS principal, and broad-brushed all her supporters — including, by inference, SEIU — as being the “architects of the destruction of Chicago’s public schools.”
CTU has ~30,000 members; SEIU represents ~16,500 CPS workers. The CTU announced that it will endorse only 15 candidates in the upcoming school board race in which all 21 seats are up for election — a decision that could make it difficult for the union to hold onto its majority.
Both unions have money, organizers, and turnout muscle. They have had turf battles before, but this current rift has turned venomous — a throwback to the mayor’s race in 2019 between Lightfoot (who won handily) and Toni Preckwinkle. The race turned personal, racialized, and bitter, especially after machine boss Ed Burke’s corruption dragnet touched Preckwinkle’s circle.
The current split isn’t a good omen for the upcoming labor struggles or for a Democratic Party still trying to pull itself out of the Machine era. It also doesn’t bode well for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s reelection chances. Both unions contributed bigly to his winning campaign, and the rift directly affects his reelection math. His job approval is in the low 20s, his favorability is underwater (34% fav / 44% unfav), and only 13.6% of Chicagoans want him to run again.