SEIU Locals 1 and 73, whose support helped elect Brandon Johnson in 2023, have endorsed Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias for Chicago mayor in 2027. Announced after a Monday vote, the endorsements put two major labor organizations behind a challenger to the mayor they helped elect.
The endorsements shift significant campaign resources away from Johnson. SEIU affiliates contributed more than $4.5 million to his 2023 mayoral campaign and supplied campaign workers and materials, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Locals 1 and 73 together represent about 50,000 workers across Chicago, including in schools, parks, airports and office buildings, per the Chicago Tribune.
The disagreement reflects a labor dispute whose roots go back at least to the previous summer. CTU proposed assigning teacher assistants to provide additional support to students with disabilities, work historically represented by SEIU Local 73, according to a Chalkbeat Chicago report from February 2025. SEIU argued that the proposed contract language could transfer Local 73 work to the teachers’ union; in 2025, the state SEIU council said CTU was attacking the union.
A Dispute Over School Jobs
Local 73 President Dian Palmer said the union had expected Johnson to remain neutral in the dispute. “SEIU expected mayoral neutrality on the job raid issue — and they didn't get it from Johnson,” the Sun-Times reported Palmer saying. Johnson has said he runs Chicago, not labor, according to the Tribune.
The dispute was eventually resolved after CTU retreated on the job-raid issue, and a new teachers contract increased the number of teaching assistant positions while adding job protections for them, per the account from WBEZ. But the damage to the SEIU-Johnson relationship appears to have outlasted that resolution. CPS had roughly 7,600 special-education classroom assistant positions as of December 31, 2024, with 325 unfilled, the station's report notes.
CPS staffing cuts added another source of friction. In August 2025, more than 1,200 custodians working for the district through privatized contracts with SEIU Local 1 learned their jobs had been eliminated, the Tribune reported at the time. Before those changes, CPS directly employed 1,375 full-time custodians represented by Local 73 and contracted with roughly 1,250 more workers represented by Local 1, according to Block Club Chicago. The outlet also found that three-quarters of principals said they lacked enough custodians to meet their schools’ cleaning needs.
A Longer History of CPS Custodial Changes
The 2025 job cuts came amid other, distinct changes to school cleaning services. CPS said in 2024 that it would not renew Aramark’s decade-long contract to manage janitorial services, a districtwide management change separate from the later cuts to private custodial positions. In an earlier episode, after CPS moved to privatized custodial management in 2014, the school board reversed nearly 500 planned layoffs when the transition was not going smoothly, according to Chalkbeat Chicago.
School Funding and Staffing Disputes
The dispute also involved CPS finances. Johnson proposed a high-interest loan to reimburse the city for a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching school employees, while the CPS budget relied on a projected $150 million increase in state funding that had not materialized, according to WBEZ. Local 73 criticized the budget’s reliance on that Springfield funding, saying it put support staff livelihoods at risk, the Tribune reported.
The conflict has tested the progressive labor coalition that helped elect Johnson in 2023. It included CTU and SEIU Locals 1, 73 and Healthcare, the Sun-Times reported in September. SEIU Healthcare has not endorsed a candidate in the mayoral race, the Tribune noted.
Giannoulias has made labor and city management part of his appeal to the locals. He has pledged to hold the line on property taxes and focus on efficiencies, and said SEIU members deserve better wages, benefits and a role in City Hall decisions, according to the Tribune. The unions also cited his record negotiating what they called a historic labor contract for Local 73-represented workers in the Secretary of State’s office and his support for state legislation creating a collective-bargaining pathway for rideshare drivers. Local 1 President Genie Kastrup said that measure helped pave the way for Illinois’ largest private-sector organizing drive.
The 2027 Race Beyond the Endorsements
The endorsement comes as Giannoulias leads Johnson in early fundraising and polling. The Sun-Times described Giannoulias as the presumed frontrunner with a campaign war chest of $19.2 million, compared with $379,471 in cash on hand for Johnson, according to the newspaper’s figures; other reports have cited different totals for Giannoulias while reporting the same cash-on-hand figure for Johnson. A NORC poll found Giannoulias was the choice of 25% of likely voters and Johnson 13.6%, while 34% were unsure, according to WTTW News. In a related report on the same survey, the Chicago Tribune said 53% of Chicago residents disapproved of Johnson’s job performance and 22% approved.
Giannoulias filed nomination petitions for the 2027 mayoral election, waiting in line outside the Chicago Board of Elections on Monday, the Tribune reported. The labor split is also visible in a separate school-board contest: SEIU locals and CTU are backing opposing candidates for Chicago school board president, and only four candidates citywide received endorsements from both camps, according to a July Chicago Tribune report. Chalkbeat Chicago reported that voters would choose among three candidates for school board president on Nov. 3.
