Latino Voices

Discussing A New City Council Era With Latino Winners in Chicago’s Runoff Election


Discussing A New City Council Era With Latino Winners in Chicago’s Runoff Election

Chicago City Council will look a lot different this year following Tuesday’s runoff election — made up of many younger, more progressive alderpeople who will be working with Chicago’s Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson.

Among that new leadership are six Black, Latina and Asian American women, including Ruth Cruz, who has declared victory in the 30th Ward.

Thanks to our sponsors:

View all sponsors

“I’ll take the lead when it comes to making sure that we are working all together, not only with our Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, but all leaders across the City Council and making sure that again, we’re making the right decisions to move the city of Chicago forward,” Cruz said. “I’m a new generation with different ideas … with being accessible to our community, being transparent as well and being responsive to the community.”

Mail-in ballots are still being counted in this race, but Cruz currently has 51% of the vote.

Meanwhile, voters re-elected the more moderate Ald. Gilbert Villegas to represent the 36th Ward instead of a candidate backed by the Chicago Teachers Union.

“As we’re getting with the new Council and the new mayor, we have to recognize that we were beneficiaries of American Rescue Plan funding,” Villegas said. “So we have to take a look at the $1.9 billion that came to the city and what’s going to be that new revenue that we’re going to be trying to get. I might be the chairman of zoning, and so what I want to do is signal to developers and builders, contractors throughout the city, that we want to get projects up and running as quickly as possible so that we can create jobs, create revenue so that the city can continue to thrive.”

This term marks a record number of retirements, which means a number of first-time alderpeople will be filling those seats. Villegas, who is going into his third term, said they’ll likely bring a lot of brand new ideas with them.

“We’re gonna hear different perspectives, different folks and ideologies,” Villegas said. “Mayor-elect Johnson has discussed his platform and we want to see as a City Council, what is it that we can implement? The reality is, when we’re talking about putting forward a budget or we’re putting forward a policy, we have to make sure that we have those necessary means to pay for it. And so I know that the Mayor-elect Johnson has a bold agenda and so at some point, we’ll be sitting down as a legislative branch to figure out what are some of the things that we can find common ground on and implement for the betterment of the city.”

Johnson has plans of diverting about $150 million out of the $2 billion budget to other kinds of programs.

“I support ‘treatment not trauma,’” said Cruz, who was backed by Johnson. “We want to make sure that we have mental health professionals, along with our police officers, to be able to provide the help that is needed. It not only helps those who need the help, but also our police officers to alleviate some of those responsibilities. Our police officers have been stretched too thin with many different responsibilities. But being able to do that, they will be able to focus on those violent crime phone calls, death calls to be able to give them the ability again to focus on what we need when it comes to public safety.”


Thanks to our sponsors:

View all sponsors

Thanks to our sponsors:

View all sponsors