Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to fill his first City Council vacancy got a final stamp of approval on Monday, ensuring the seat left by a top aldermanic ally will be occupied by another loyal progressive.
In a 32-11 vote, City Council members voted to approve Cook County Commissioner Anthony Quezada as alderman of the 35th Ward after his predecessor, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, resigned last month to lead the Chicago Park District. Quezada’s confirmation marks Johnson’s first mayoral appointment to the council.
Johnson’s appointment was briefly challenged by aldermen who opposed Quezada because of his decade-old social media post using a racial slur. Most Black aldermen speaking ahead of the confirmation vote signaled their willingness to forgive Quezada after he apologized.
However, mayoral critic Ald. David Moore, 17th, used a colorful analogy to argue Quezada’s first apology saying “I regret having written it” was insincere.
“If I was to have an opportunity to have an affair with Beyonce, and Jay-Z catch me and shoot me in my behind,” Moore said, there’s a difference between him saying, “I regret being in that hotel room with Beyonce,” versus “I’m sorry for sleeping for Beyonce.”
Before the full vote, the Rules Committee meeting began with little pushback as members advanced Quezada’s appointment to represent Logan Square and other Northwest Side neighborhoods. The vote is typically a formality where council members rubber stamp the mayor’s selection, announced last week.
Quezada delivered an opening statement promising a collaborative “cool temper” amid the “vitriol that we’re seeing across all different spectrums and levels of government.”
Then the meeting went off the rails, as Johnson opponents challenged Quezada’s committee assignments that mirrored Ramirez-Rosa’s and said it’s unfair for a new alderman to benefit from the same privileges of seniority his predecessor got. Those assignments include the powerful Zoning, Budget, Finance and Housing committees.
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly kicked off the protestations. Rules chair Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, swatted them away by noting she was also an appointee — by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2006 — and inherited the plum committee assignments enjoyed by her predecessor, Todd Stroger.
Then 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale demanded a roll call for himself to be added to the Budget Committee. In a sign the mayor’s allies did not have the votes to block that motion, Harris instead added Beale’s request to the ordinance containing Quezada’s assignments.
Beale told reporters his demand was only fair given he is the second-most senior member of City Council. The move to add Beale to Budget must still receive a full floor vote.
“That is not how it is supposed to be done,” Beale said, lamenting that a proposed council reorganization a group of aldermen attempted before Johnson took office did not succeed. “We wouldn’t be sitting there having this problem today if this council would finally stand up and do the job that we were elected to do.”
Quezada has said he will seek a full term in 2027, when he will join the rest of the council on the ballot. He will benefit from an incumbency advantage, to the chagrin of other 35th Ward hopefuls who have said the selection committee’s process was “anti-democratic,” though recent aldermanic appointees have found ties to unpopular mayors troublesome come election time.
The son of a father who immigrated to the U.S. without legal permission, Quezada is familiar with ward politics: his first experience in elected office came in 2015 as an intern for former 1st Ward Ald. Proco “Joe” Moreno.
He quit the gig over what he said was Moreno’s too-cozy relationship with real estate developers, he previously told the Tribune. After meeting Ramirez-Rosa during U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, Quezada went on to work in the 35th Ward office on constituent services from the summer of 2016 until 2022.
That year, Quezada won a seat on the Cook County Board, becoming the county’s first openly gay Latino commissioner, defeating incumbent Democrat Luis Arroyo Jr. in a five-way 2022 primary to represent the county’s 8th District, which stretches across the city’s Northwest Side.
Quezada won 54% of the 35th Ward vote in that election and went on to become a Johnson ally during their brief overlap on the County Board. While there, he helped pass the county’s paid leave ordinance and worked to ensure the county public defender could provide legal representation to undocumented people in immigration court.
Quezada’s successor on the County Board will be chosen by Democratic committeepeople that span his district. Ramirez-Rosa, whose ward makes up the biggest portion of the district, will carry the largest weighted vote and chair the selection committee. Ald. Ruth Cruz, the committeeperson for the 30th Ward, carries the next largest chunk, followed by Ald. Jesse Fuentes in the 26th Ward.
The entire County Board is up for reelection in 2026.
Ramirez-Rosa, a three-term alderman with an outsized influence among his fellow progressives, left his council seat after Johnson tapped him to lead the Park District following a public vow to reset his administration with friendlier faces midway through his term.
Shortly after, the superintendent-in-waiting all but endorsed his former ward office staffer to replace him on the City Council.
Monday’s mini-rebellion came a week after another dispute over committee assignments blew up between the Johnson administration and three members of the Progressive Caucus.
Aldermen Maria Hadden, Andre Vasquez and Matt Martin sent two letters warning the Johnson administration against what they claimed were plans to strip each of them of their council committee chairmanships. On Monday, Hadden said Johnson deputy Kennedy Bartley has since reassured her those plans are not on the table.
Hadden said as of Monday morning the mayor had still not reached out about the snafu before she took a swipe: “There’s a lot of stuff that Chicagoans are counting on us to do, and we’re not necessarily seeing the mayor do it. That means we’re as a co-equal branch of government going to have to step up and do some things City Council may not have traditionally done.
For her part, Bartley told reporters Monday that “many of those items that are on the mayor’s platform are also in alignment with those three alderpeople” but declined to elaborate on the “interpersonal rumors and drama” last week.
“What got back to them was a rumor. I don’t care to drag out a rumor any further,” Bartley said. “I look forward to working alongside them to make sure that we are passing bold, progressive, frankly life-saving initiatives.”