Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. I'm Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is John McGinnis. He's been on the show before. He's the George C. Dix

Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern University Law School. He's a contributing editor of

City Journal, and he's written for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal,

Time, The LA Times, New York Post, much more. He blogs regularly at Law and Liberty. He's the author

of two books, accelerating democracy, transforming government through technology and originalism

and the good constitution. A Chicago resident, John, provides valuable perspective for a city journal on the Windy City.

So today we're going to discuss the results of Chicago's recent mayoral election.

So, John, thanks, as always, for joining us.

I'm delighted to be here.

So last week, Brandon Johnson, who's a Cook County Board Commissioner, defeated former Chicago

Public School CEO Paul Valles in Chicago's mayoral election.

Now, both men are Democrats, yet ideologically they were very far apart.

So I wonder if you, you know, for folks who haven't closely watched Chicago politics,

can you just give us a brief introduction to these two men and summarize basically what they were running on?

Certainly.

Paul Valles was a long-time educational leader of public schools, not only in Chicago, but in

other areas like New Orleans and Philadelphia.

He was a centrist Democrat.

He had run a few times before for political offices in Illinois, lieutenant governor and mayor

before.

And it hadn't gotten very far.

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