When Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis announced in October that she wasn’t entering the mayoral race, incumbent Rahm Emanuel must have breathed a sigh of relief. Lewis, the leader of the 2012 CTU strike, was widely expected to challenge Emanuel in the February 24 election as an anti-austerity, pro-labor Democrat. Some polls even showed her with more support among likely voters than the deep-pocketed mayor.

From privatizing city services to closing mental health facilities that served the city’s most vulnerable residents to shuttering forty-nine public schools in predominately poor black communities in favor of charter schools, Emanuel’s record has provided plenty of grist for left candidates of varying stripes. While his most formidable opponent has stepped aside, a number of insurgent opposition candidates are still opposing Emanuel and other neoliberal incumbents.

With Lewis out of the race, the CTU endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. A member of the predominately Latino community of Pilsen in the city’s Lower South Side, Garcia first gained prominence by winning a seat for alderman in 1987 during the administration of Harold Washington, an anti-machine politician and Chicago’s first black mayor. Despite his experience working as a community and political leader, Garcia hasn’t attracted an outpouring of support: many still view him as an insider, even if he is decidedly more progressive than Emanuel.