Two days ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson was assuring everyone a deal was close. Yesterday, the Bears voted to build their new stadium in Hammond, Indiana. That is not a coincidence. That is what political dysfunction looks like when the clock finally runs out — a charter NFL franchise that has called Illinois home since 1921 packing up and crossing the state line into a place where Chicago famously is not.
Here is the part the press releases will dance around: Indiana did not steal the Bears. Illinois lost them. Republican Gov. Mike Braun and Indiana lawmakers put a concrete, billion-dollar offer on the table and moved fast. Meanwhile, the Democrat trifecta running Illinois — Johnson in City Hall, Pritzker in the governor’s mansion, and a supermajority in Springfield — spent years stepping on each other.
The “megaprojects” bill that was supposed to anchor the team in Arlington Heights had been kicking around for three years and still couldn’t find the votes. A last-minute scramble to let municipalities dodge stadium property taxes squeaked through the Senate and then died before the House could touch it. Three branches of single-party government, and they couldn’t pass a bill they all claimed to want.
The irony is that Pritzker’s stated reason for dragging his feet was affordability — fretting that the state shouldn’t be spending money on a stadium while residents struggle. He’s not entirely wrong about the struggle. But a state where families are fleeing the tax burden, where Chicago’s body count makes national headlines most weekends, and where the property taxes were so punishing the team went shopping in another state, doesn’t get to pin the loss on fiscal prudence.
The same governance that drives out the residents drove out the football team. The Bears just had the resources to leave first.
And so the franchise keeps the name and ditches the address. The fight song still insists they’re “the pride and joy of Illinois,” which will land a little differently from a stadium in Hammond. Johnson’s office says it isn’t over until there are shovels in the ground — the political equivalent of a man insisting the relationship is fine while watching the moving truck pull away. Maybe a Hail Mary saves it. But the lesson is already written: when a city’s leadership treats competence as optional, eventually even the things you thought could never leave will find the door.