District 1a neighborhoods: O’Hare, Norwood Park, Forest Glen, Jefferson Park, Dunning, Edison Park
Retired police officer Margie Luczak unseated incumbent Ed Bannon Tuesday night to become the Far Northwest Side’s new representative on the now fully elected school board.
Luczak prevailed thanks to big spending by anti-Chicago Teachers Union groups that put three times as much money behind her as her opponent received from the labor unions that backed him.
Bannon conceded to her Tuesday night, as she was leading 2 to 1, both of them told the Sun-Times.
“I'm like, really overwhelmed because this is fantastic,” she said by phone. “There's…so many teachers that were just rooting for me.
“Everybody that came up to me said, 'I'm not with the CTU. I don't believe what they're doing'… Ed Bannon was appointed by (Mayor) Brandon Johnson. That was a really big issue up here for me.”
Voters seeking a change in leadership opted for Luczak, who served on Chicago’s police force for more than 25 years. Her campaign represented a foil to Bannon’s union-backed candidacy.
She proudly said she’s not a “CTU puppet” and was supported by contributions from the political arm of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and The Urban Center, an organization that advocates for centrist leadership and school choice, including private schools. But she has little direct experience in education.
“I did get donations, and I did have a fundraiser but I didn't have billionaires backing me,” Luczak said. “We are neighborhood people here and the community came out for me.”
Although the school board elections are nonpartisan, political undercurrents are present in voters’ decisions about which candidate aligns with their values. On the Far Northwest Side, voters have been more receptive to conservative candidates than much of Chicago and could be more sympathetic to an “anti-establishment” platform.
It’s one of the few areas in Chicago that leaned toward President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. And in 2023, many voters here picked former CPS CEO Paul Vallas over Johnson.
Bannon attributed his defeat to the nature of the district.
“I think the fundamentals of the district were just too hard to overcome. It was a district that was drawn with a conservative lean to it and that's how the race came out,” he said by phone.
“I think we ran on the right issues. We need full funding for schools, need to keep public dollars public, need to prevent billionaires from privatizing the education system, but I think those issues weren't as important to voters in that district who, you can see from the last election, that went for Trump and that's how the voters went with this race.”
Though Bannon was appointed by Johnson, he hasn’t always aligned with him, most notably when he voted last year in favor of the CPS budget plan Johnson’s other appointees were trying to block. Bannon’s record earned him endorsements from the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU Illinois State Council, the other major union representing CPS support staff.
“I'm happy there's an elected school board. I think that's a victory for Chicago. People have chosen elected officials.”
This Far Northwest Side district is home to 22 schools that enroll more white students than Chicago Public Schools as a whole, but are more diverse than the voting population. Families here choose their neighborhood public schools at the highest rate in the city — a whopping 75% compared to a citywide average of about 46%.
Contributing: Makiya Seminera, Chalkbeat Chicago
