If you’re not mayor of Chicago, thank a teacher.

Ever since he lost last year’s mayoral election to a former social studies teacher, Paul Vallas has been typing editorials portraying teachers as the greatest threat to democracy, good governance, and fiscal responsibility this city has ever seen. On the website of the Illinois Policy Institute, a taxpayer watchdog group whose true north is that teachers earn way too much money, he wrote about the municipal chaos that will follow if the Chicago Teachers Union slate wins this November’s school board elections.

“According to leaked budget documents, the union has pledged $1 million to their slate of candidates with the aim of increasing their ranks, protecting their members, increasing compensation and reducing their workloads. They plan to deploy their funding and door knockers to boost far-left progressives and Socialists who are anti-police, anti-incarceration, anti-school choice and anti-accountability. They want higher taxes, more mandates and big government to be the answer to all problems…Chicago can’t let more of its governance fall under CTU control.”

Teachers have already taken over City Hall. Now, they want to take over the school board. If we don’t stop them there, who knows what they’ll be running next. A teacher could be piloting the International Space Station. A teacher could command the 82nd Airborne Division. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris chose a teacher — a social studies teacher — as her running mate. If she wins, then dies in office, a teacher will be commander in chief of the armed forces, with possession of the nuclear launch codes. This is the same teacher who, as governor of Minnesota, signed a bill providing free tampons and menstrual pads in public schools. Where will these far-left progressives and Socialists stop? The CTU wears red, so it must think Red, too.

 According to public opinion surveys, Americans love teachers. The website Insider Monkey ranks teaching as the fourth-most respected profession, after only doctors, nurses, and firefighters. Target gives teachers 20 percent off everything storewide. So what have teachers done to inspire so much fear and loathing among the self-proclaimed advocates of good government? They got power, that’s what. Teachers were admirable as long as they educated our children as a “labor of love” — i.e., for low pay. But they got politicized after former Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 schools without consulting any of the teachers who worked there. Once you get into politics, you’re bound to make enemies. Juan Rangel, a former charter leader and executive director of the Urban Center, a non-profit he founded with Vallas, says that “as the CTU becomes more of an entrenched power, they seem to be less interested in accountability and results for children and families.”

Teachers didn’t seize power in the traditional American style, either, by spending a lot of money to get elected to office. Teachers can’t spend a lot of money to get elected office. The average public school teacher earns $93,182 a year. That’s $43,000 more than in 2012 — “nearly triple the private sector increase,” according to the Illinois Policy Institute — but it’s certainly not enough to self-fund a campaign. Mayor Johnson lives in the low-income neighborhood of Austin, in a house that, last I looked, is badly in need of a paint job. There are no billionaire teachers buying governorship and presidencies. What the teachers did was get organized. Teachers are good at organization. Any group of people who can keep the attention of 30 eighth-graders all going through puberty at the same time can certainly get out the vote in a precinct. During the mayoral election, Paul Vallas did things the American Way. His wealthy donors wrote him big checks. He raised twice as much money as Johnson, who did things the Soviet Way, by inspiring people who didn’t have much money to knock on doors and sing his praises to the voters. It really was unfair. Or at least un-American.

Now we live in the Teachers Republic of Chicago. But let’s look at how other professions have fared when they ran the city. Lawyers, for example. Former Ald. Ed Burke is a lawyer. He was once one of the most powerful men in the city, but now he’s going to prison for using his office to direct business to his law firm, which won property tax breaks for wealthy real estate interests. Former Mayor Lori Lighfoot is a lawyer who earned nearly $1 million a year in private practice at Mayer Brown. She couldn’t get along with the City Council. Or how about investment bankers? In two-and-a-half years with the investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella, Rahm Emanuel earned $18 million. As mayor, he was run out of office for covering up a video of a police shooting. Former governor Bruce Rauner was an investment banker, and he couldn’t pass a budget. All those people had so much money they thought they knew better than everyone around them. Chicago could be run by engineers, dentists, used car salesmen, cosmetologists, disc jockeys, or high-earning CEOs. We could be doing a lot worse than teachers. We certainly have.