Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday called Rahm Emanuel’s record as mayor “disqualifying,” reviving one of the city’s most divisive political fights just as Emanuel is being watched for signs of a 2028 presidential bid.
Speaking on WBEZ’s monthly Ask the Mayor program, Johnson said he had “very deep concerns about the former mayor of the city of Chicago,” pointing to “school closures to privatization to austere budgets” and adding, “That’s disqualifying for me.” He also referred to “a boy who was murdered by a police officer and it was covered up,” a reference to the 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke.
The McDonald case remains the sharpest stain on Emanuel’s Chicago years. Dashcam video showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times was withheld by the city for 14 months until a circuit judge ordered its release, and Van Dyke was later convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated battery. He was released from Taylorville Correctional Center in February 2022 after serving less than half of his 81-month sentence.
Emanuel, who floated a 10% federal tax on online sports betting and prediction markets at a Live event in Washington on Wednesday, refused to respond to Johnson’s remarks on Thursday, telling the Chicago Sun-Times, “I’m not going to engage.” His spokesperson Matt McGrath then dismissed Johnson’s standing with voters and state lawmakers, saying, “Why would anyone care what Brandon Johnson says? Springfield doesn’t. The City Council doesn’t. And judging by his approval ratings, most Chicagoans are biding their time until there’s a new mayor next spring to put an end to the chaos and incompetence and get the City back on track.”
The exchange lands because Emanuel has not formally announced a presidential campaign, but he is clearly revving up for one, and Chicago remains the place where questions about his record still draw the hardest response. That argument is not new. Former longtime Inspector General Joe Ferguson wrote to members of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee in 2019 that there was not a cover-up in the McDonald case, and when the committee was weighing Emanuel for U.S. ambassador to Japan, Ferguson said, “That is not the fact.” Johnson’s attack keeps the old wound open at the exact moment Emanuel is trying to turn attention to a national future.
What happens next is straightforward: Emanuel will keep building a case for a bigger stage, and critics will keep forcing him back to the Chicago record that still defines him.
