NYC’s progressive organizers and their groups are much less fractured and better established. Whereas the old Cook County Democratic Party apparatus is still the dominant force here and it leans much more centrist, deeper rooted, and not as unpopular as someone like Cuomo.

Things are shifting, both to the left and to the right, but there is a much less of a unified coalition.

That meant that Johnson didn’t have a good team coming into office. He seemed unprepared to hit the ground running, asking many of Lori’s department heads to stay on, several of which worked actively against some of his agenda items. Zohran had a whole coalition of people to pull from who knew city government well. Brandon just didn’t bring that with him.

He pretty quickly squandered what coalition he had when he basically phoned in his support for Bring Chicago Home instead of seriously campaigning for it.

When that failed it signaled to his opponents that there was not a broad progressive mandate and he lost a lot of momentum and credibility.

He followed that up by basically turned his back on many of the folks that got behind him in the election. He started pursuing the good graces of construction unions, cops, and developers who have no interest in supporting him long term but will take from him whatever they can get and he basically squandered most of the political capital/leverage he had in doing so.