Long before Brandon Johnson ever thought of running for office, or even of moving to Chicago, his classmates at Ellis Middle School in Elgin called him “Mr. Mayor.”
He was always the most serious young man in the room. At Ellis, he was the eighth-grade class president. In high school, he carried a briefcase. He wore a tie. He had, says his sister Andrea Johnson-Williams, “a presence.” His father, Andrew, was a pastor in the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. His congregation had 300 souls, and it was expected that one day Brandon would take over his pulpit. He was the sixth of 10 children, but his maturity and sense of purpose marked him as the heir.
When he was 19, after his freshman year of college, his mother died of health issues stemming from her congestive heart failure, and he took charge of the church’s Tuesday night youth group. He drove a 15-passenger van to pick up kids from the poor side of Elgin, east of the Fox River, then fed them dinner and counseled them on dating and bullying. “Brandon was always at the core of setting values, especially for the young ladies: ‘You deserve a certain level of treatment,’ ” recalls his sister. “That wasn’t necessarily keeping your chastity, but if you do make that decision, here’s what qualities you should be looking for.”
Johnson understood the teenagers’ plight because he’d also grown up on the poor side of Elgin, a satellite city of Chicago that by the 1990s was so far past its industrial and commercial heyday that the state tried to rescue it with a riverboat casino. Preaching was his father’s calling, but preaching wouldn’t feed 10 kids, so Andrew Johnson Jr. supported his family with odd jobs: driving a truck, rehabbing houses. After he injured his back in a semitruck rollover, he was unable to find full-time work, so he sold shoes part-time at Sears. One Christmas, he bought his children toys from the returns department. (Brandon got a G.I. Joe.) Brandon’s mother, Wilma Jean, styled hair in the house. Some weeks, the family had no water because the bill had gone unpaid. Other weeks, no electricity, requiring them to run an extension cord to a neighbor’s house. There were three bedrooms—one for the boys, one for the girls, one for the parents—and one bathroom, for all 12 Johnsons, plus whatever foster children, cousins, and battered women were living in the house at the time. The family’s finances finally stabilized when Andrew landed a state job at the Elgin Mental Health Center, caring for patients on the night shift.
There are many unknowns about how Brandon Johnson will govern Chicago, but one thing is certain: The city has never had a mayor like this. “Here’s what I take to the fifth floor,” says Johnson, 47. “I understand the conditions of the working poor. There are people who go to work every single day and, in many instances, like my father, have multiple jobs. There are real examples of people who go to work every single day, and they are still struggling to make ends meet every single day. Just because someone is struggling, it doesn’t mean they’re
