Mayor Johnson hires organizer as administration liaison to progressive groups
Mayor Brandon Johnson is making more prime space for his progressive base with a new hire.
Johnson created a new role to bring community organizer Kennedy Bartley into his administration. Starting Tuesday, Bartley will serve as managing deputy of external relations, tasked with working more closely with the unions, activist organizations and neighborhood groups that helped make Johnson mayor.
Bartley currently works as the executive director of United Working Families, a political organization closely aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union that serves as an umbrella coalition for various progressive groups and unions.
The move will help Johnson’s team “make sure that we are executing the vision Chicago elected him to execute,” Bartley told the Tribune Friday.
“You don’t get to put people in office and say you did that. You have to make sure you are following through on your word,” she said.
Bartley will be doing work similar to what she already does at UWF, where she helped rally groups behind Johnson’s election and major policies like the Bring Chicago Home referendum that sought to create new city revenue earmarked for homelessness by raising real estate transfer taxes, but ultimately failed with voters.
No other administration has had a liaison role like this, said Bartley, who already meets often with top mayoral advisers.
“Because no other administration understands that they are mayor for everyone,” she added.
Bartley’s role will give progressive groups and unions a dedicated ear to air grievances or hopes and a direct source for important updates on the administration’s actions. The Johnson administration did not respond Friday when asked how much money she will make in her new role.
Bartley will also help the administration wrangle City Council votes, which has at times proved challenging for the administration during its first year, as when 34 aldermen supported an order Wednesday to take control of the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system from the mayor.
The appointment speaks to the difficulty Johnson faces keeping his base happy now that they expect him to deliver on the ambitious progressive goals he laid out while campaigning for mayor.
Alongside the early-April hiring of Joe Calvello, former communications director for Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the hire marks a continued effort by Johnson to change his communication strategy with allies and the public.
Calvello arrived just as Johnson chief of staff Rich Guidice left the administration. The presence of Guidice, a veteran of several past mayoral administrations, signaled the newly elected mayor was keeping a semblance of Chicago politics’ old guard even as Johnson’s grassroots labor coalition was preaching it would reform city government and do away with archaic ways of governing.
Guidice was replaced by Cristina Pacione-Zayas, a former state senator who was Johnson’s deputy chief of staff since the beginning of his term in office.
Three top Johnson officials declined to comment on the hiring Friday.
The new role will help “people know this is a mayor who is bringing the margins to the center. That stuff is already happening,” Bartley said. “I think that that is a sign that this mayor walks the walk, that he does the thing that he talks about.”
jsheridan@chicagotribune.com