Brandon Johnson’s predecessors could have told him there would be days like these. His approval rating has dipped to 25 percent. Much of the city is on him for running roughshod over Chicago Public Schools. Even some of his progressive allies have turned against him, the bulk of City Council members signing a letter criticizing him for his handling of the school board. And on top of all that, his biggest individual donor, rapper Lil Durk, has been arrested on murder-for-hire charges.

If Johnson turns out to be a one-term-and-done, he’ll suffer the fate of most modern Chicago mayors — at least those not named Daley. The span from 1976, when Richard J. died, to 1989, when Richard M. was elected, has come to be known as the inter-Daley period. In those 13 years, Chicago ran through four mayors: Michael Bilandic, Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, and Eugene Sawyer. Only Washington won a second term, before dying of a heart attack a few months later. The stretch since 2011, when Richard M. retired, could be described as the post-Daley period. We’re on our third mayor in those 13 years. Yes, Rahm Emanuel won two terms before standing down, but he was forced into a runoff the second time, something Richard M. never faced. Lori Lightfoot didn’t even make the runoff in her bid for reelection.

How were the Daleys able to maintain their popularity and hold on power — they were in office for a combined 43 years — when so many who followed fumbled away the mayorship? Think of father and son as the Irish Corleones. Politics was their family business, and it was just a business. They knew how to wield power, and they never took anything personally, even from their most strident opponents.

“They were smart enough not to let petty grievances or real or imagined slights get in the way of making sure that they retained power,” says former alderperson Joe Moore, who won his seat over a Richard M.—appointed incumbent and became a constant critic of the mayor. “Despite the fact I was one of his strongest opponents in the City Council, especially in the early years, he still treated me fairly. He helped me with matters in my ward, and it probably lessened the intensity of my opposition to him.”

Johnson, on the other hand, has been feisty and defensive with critics. In October, he held a press conference at which he compared opponents of his push to boost school spending to Confederates and called the way a reporter asked about his plans to attend a Bears game in London partially on the city’s dime “pretty jacked up,” insinuating he was being pressed on the matter because he is a Black man.

Richard M. “learned politics at the knee of the master,” says Forrest Claypool, who served as Daley’s chief of staff. That included tagging along when Dad attended wakes around town. Richard M., who grew up in Bridgeport, “understood the neighborhoods intimately,” Claypool continues. “He was out in the neighborhoods every Saturday morning. He built those deep community relationships. That was Rahm’s Achilles’ heel. He would parachute into a neighborhood bearing gifts and be surprised when he wasn’t greeted with warmth.”

Former Fox 32 political reporter Mike Flannery, who covered both Daleys, thinks Emanuel and Lightfoot suffered from not spending their formative years in Chicago. He has the same knock on Johnson, whom he dismissively calls “the out-of-towner” because he grew up in Elgin: “He didn’t encounter all sorts of people, all sorts of Chicagoans, the way Richie did. We need somebody who knows every nook of the city, the priorities of the communities.”

Richard M. also “understood mayoral power,” Claypool adds. Daley knew how to use patronage and how to build alliances by providing politicians with resources. “When Lightfoot went to Springfield to try to stop the legislature from stripping the mayor of control of the schools, she had nothing to offer and nobody had anything to fear from her,” says Claypool. “Daley built up sticks and carrots.”

Daley was never ideological, points out Claypool: “He wouldn’t have allowed himself to become captive of a special interest,” as Johnson is with the teachers’ union. And Daley had a firm grasp of fiscal matters, knowledge passed on to him by his father, who was once director of the Illinois Department of Finance. In contrast, Johnson, who pushed the school board to take out a high-interest loan amid a budget crisis, “doesn’t know a goddamn thing” about municipal finance, says Flannery.

When Richard M. took over, the city was racially divided, still not having fully healed from the divisive Council Wars that plagued Washington’s first years, in the mid-’80s. Daley was opposed by Black voters in his early elections, but he co-opted Black council members by investing in their wards.

Johnson’s tenure has played out in sharp contrast. Though he was elected largely on the back of Black voters, along with North Side progressives, he has struggled to maintain support of Black council members. Many of them rebelled against his push to cancel the ShotSpotter contract, defeating a resolution that had little chance of passing. “Daley would never have called that vote,” says one of those Black alderpersons, Anthony Beale, who has represented the Far South Side’s 9th Ward since 1999. “It makes you look powerless.”

That misfire was indicative, Beale says, of the way Johnson has dealt with City Council members since taking office. “Mayor Daley had his own unique relationship with every alderman. His philosophy was ‘Grow the family’ — make friends. That’s the kind of mayor that we are lacking now. Today, the mayor’s office is being run by a leftwing socialist agenda that’s killing the city.” The October letter from 41 of the 50 alderpersons criticizing Johnson is a sign, Beale says, that the mayor “is not trying to grow the family; he’s not trying to build relationships.”

There are no more Daleys left to run Chicago. Bill Daley lost a bid for mayor in 2019. Patrick Daley Thompson lost his City Council seat when he was convicted of fraud. We may never see another 20-year mayoralty. And if we do, it won’t be the current mayor, insists Flannery: “When politically aware Chicagoans get together these days, it’s: ‘Who’s next after this guy?’ ”