In the hot pursuit of cash, Mayor Johnson gets desperate
"Good Lord, what has this buffoon done now?"
A memorable line uttered by Judge Smails — portrayed by actor Ted Knight in the 1980 classic Caddyshack — Smails was responding with fury upon learning Rodney Dangerfield’s boorish Al Czervik character was a fixture at the snobby Bushwood Country Club.
And that is also the typical response from most Chicagoans when learning of every major pronouncement from City Hall since Brandon Johnson was elected mayor three years ago.
Of course, Johnson’s misrule seems to be longer than three years.
To be fair, this latest announcement, from the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA) didn’t come from Johnson himself, but it's safe to assume the mayor had a hand in it.
The CDA is considering selling naming rights and sponsorship opportunities for some facilities at Midway and O'Hare International airports.
Thankfully, the names of both airports, which are rooted in World War II heroism, aren’t part of the package.
And in the end, this idea may amount to nothing.
“Nobody knows what it may reveal. This is not a procurement. There is no contract award or anything like that. We just want to explore and see what potential opportunities are out there — if any at all,” Michael McMurray, Chicago’s aviation commissioner, told the Chicago Sun-Times last month.
A Request for Information has been requested by the CDA to gauge corporate interest in the naming rights of people movers, parking lots, family rest rooms, concourses, bus stops, shuttle buses, and children’s recreation areas. Completed RFIs are due in mid-February.
Crime
But any time there is discussion of major investment in Chicago, the massive elephant in the room is brought into discussion, and of course that is crime.
Last year on the CTA Blue Line, a career criminal with 72 arrests on his record poured gasoline on a passenger and then set her on fire. This tragic story received national attention. And while crime is down in Chicago, including murders; in 2025, once again, Chicago saw more murders than New York and Los Angeles, which have much larger populations.
Much of the credit for that decline deservedly belongs to Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, who is much more aggressive in prosecuting crime compared to the ruinous tenure of her predecessor, Kim Foxx. While Johnson did not make an endorsement in the 2024 state’s attorney race, his handlers and his brain trust, the Chicago Teachers Union, backed O'Neill's far-left opponent in the Democratic primary.
Johnson’s only successful major hire, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, deserves accolades for his good work that has also contributed to falling crime rates.
Homelessness
Early in Johnson’s term, in another story that gained national attention, hundreds of migrants, most of them from Venezuela and Central America, were living at O’Hare, sleeping on cots and cardboard, and using ORD washrooms. Some of those family restrooms might end up going up for a corporate sponsorship bid.
The aforementioned CTA Blue Line was described as a "moving homeless shelter" late last year by the Chicago Contrarian’s Amy Jacobson in a jarring video that she posted on X, which has been viewed by nearly one million users. The northwest terminus of the Blue Line is O’Hare Airport, which had a major, non-migrant, homeless problem concurrent with the O’Hare migrant crisis in 2023, was a scene described as “dystopian” in the New York Post.
By all accounts there are currently fewer homeless people than in 2022, when the Haymarket Center counted 618 homeless at O'Hare, but 100 or 200 currently living there seems like a reasonable estimate.
So, let’s say that you are the marketing director of “XYX Widgets.” Would you want to put your employers’ corporate name on an O’Hare or Midway facility? Would you risk your career as a highly paid marketing executive on such a move?
It’s true that big companies have big money. But also, the bigger the company, the more risk averse it is.
Which leads to another problem with Chicago politics — so few elected officials have private sector experience. Advertising and marketing are much more than “Use my company name and here is some money for it.” Johnson, who moved into City Hall’s fifth floor after working as a CPS teacher, a part-time county commissioner, and a full-time organizer — and that means activist — simply doesn’t understand the private sector.
We’ll know more soon when the RFI process ends, but the selling of naming rights and sponsorships at Chicago airports will very likely end up going nowhere, just like the other impractical ideas that have come out of City Hall since Johnson was elected, such as a social media tax and bringing back the hated employee head tax.
Eureka!
Every few days I imagine Brandon Johnson having an Archimedes “Eureka, I have found it,” moment when a proposal such as selling airport facility naming rights lands on his desk. Perhaps afterwards, he madly runs through the corridors of City Hall, with his ridiculous pointy-head hairstyle acting as a windshear to cut through all the other hot air there, just as the ancient Greek genius did outside his home, without the funny haircut, when he discovered the principle of displacement.
Only instead of “eureka,” Johnson screams as he charges through City Hall, “Chicago is the greatest freaking city in the world!”
Such impulsiveness is probably how Chicago is governed — or actually, is misgoverned.
One of those mindless episodes was early in Johnson’s term, when he was touting the bad idea of the city owning and operating grocery stores. State money was available to partially fund that effort, but City Hall never bothered to apply for grants to fund the endeavor.
Chicagoans, this is what happens when you elect a candidate who collects big paychecks but allows thousands of dollars in unpaid municipal water bills and traffic violations to pile up at home.
No way out
Sadly, many years ago Chicago dug itself into a trench and there is no way out of it, short of a bankruptcy declaration, or a bankruptcy called something else.
On the other hand, perhaps a bankruptcy law firm might be interested in the naming rights for O’Hare’s people mover or a parking lot at Midway.
And cynics might instead call it a people-moving-out-mover.
There is so much in Chicago to be cynical about with Brandon Johnson in charge.
