The long-simmering feud between Mayor Brandon Johnson and half of the coalition of progressive unions that helped put him in office boiled over Tuesday, triggering a pivotal endorsement for Illlinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias in the race for mayor.
Service Employees International Union Locals 1 and 73 threw their formidable support behind Giannoulias, the presumed frontrunner with a campaign war chest of $19.2 million. SEIU affiliates together contributed over $4.5 million to Johnson’s 2023 mayoral campaign. The union also provided scores of campaign workers and materials.
Those resources will now presumably be available to Giannoulias — and more importantly, denied to Johnson, who has just $379,471 in cash on hand.
SEIU’s decision to divorce itself from Johnson comes as no surprise, and has been building since early 2025.
That’s when SEIU accused the Chicago Teachers Union of crafting contract proposals that would train teacher assistants to do work currently done by members of SEIU Local 73, potentially diminishing the union’s future ranks. SEIU Local 73 went so far as to sign onto an internal SEIU-wide resolution declaring itself “under attack” by CTU.
The conflict was ultimately resolved — with a CTU retreat on the job raid issue and a new teachers contract that included an increase in the number of teaching assistants as well as job protections for them.
Nevertheless, the damage was done. Trust was broken — and so was the once powerful coalition of progressive unions that helped put Johnson in office.
Johnson is a former middle school teacher who served as a paid organizer for CTU before becoming mayor. But SEIU expected mayoral neutrality on the job raid issue — and they didn't get it from Johnson.
“I understand relationships. I asked him to stand down," Local 73 President Dian Palmer told the Sun-Times. "We had all kinds of evidence that these workers belonged to us. I told him, `You don’t have to do anything. These are your friends. Just let us go through the grievance process.’ He told me that he would call me back and he never called me back.”
“That was hurtful. I felt like we were fighting for our labor life because this unit is one of the larger units that we have and it would change our life tremendously if we were to lose these members.”
Another item on SEIU’s bill of particulars was the mayor’s decision to join forces with CTU in pressuring the board to take out a high-interest loan to reimburse the city for a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching school employees that ultimately triggered the firing of Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.
Martinez's replacement, Macquline King, also refused to take out the loan and instead pushed through a budget that assumes a $150 million increase in state funding.
“When the loan happens and people don’t have the money to [make payments] they pick the low-hanging fruit. They’re not gonna get rid of teachers. So they start to get rid of ancillary staff. That would be our members,” Palmer said.
The rift between CTU and SEIU prompted the former allies to endorse rival candidates in races for seats on the soon-to-be elected school board, including board presidents.
Anthony Driver took a leave of absence as executive director of SEIU's Illinois State Council to chair of a new SEIU-funded PAC Brighter Futures to help elect SEIU-backed candidates to the new 21-member board, including board president candidate Jessica Biggs.
Palmer, who has worked with Giannoulias and endorsed him for Illinois Secretary of State, said her members believe they have a politician they can trust to at least remain neutral if a similar controversy arises.
Together, the three SEIU locals represent 50,000 Chicago employees. Thousands of them are private sector janitors and custodians employed by city contractors. Local 73 alone represents 18,000 government employees, most of them at CPS.
“Alexi will be fairer because he doesn’t have the kind of relationships with people that Brandon did,” Palmer said of CTU. “We had a mayor who we had done everything to get elected both financially, physically, canvassing, everything. And then, on the one opportunity that he had — where he didn’t have to do anything, just stay out of it and say, `Both of you are my friends. I’m hoping you all work it out. If you want me to come in and mediate this, I will. But otherwise, I’m not gonna get involved in it.’ But, he didn’t.”
Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee said Johnson’s “record of standing up for working people speaks for itself" and he will take his case directly to SEIU members.
“Political alliances are always shifting… You want as much support as you can get. But what this election is going to come down to is the records of the individual candidates,” he said. “Members of various unions who live in the city, get up every day trying to put food on the table — those voters are gonna look at the records of the candidates. The mayor feels very strongly and confident that his record will hold up against anybody else in the field.”
