Cardenas, a first-term Board of Review member who represented the 12th Ward — which included parts of McKinley Park, Brighton Park and Little Village — on the Chicago City Council from 2003 to 2022, is pursuing a second term on the board and won the Democratic primary in March against Juanita Irizarry, the former executive director of Friends of the Parks.  

But just over two weeks ago, Cardenas announced he would enter the increasingly crowded mayor’s race next February. He had announced an exploratory committee in late April. 

“I think the timing is appropriate for somebody who knows the ins and outs of municipal government,” Cardenas told The Daily Line. “I was able to secure a lot of infrastructure, schools, parks, a high school for Back of the Yards through my tenure [as alderman].”

His mayoral campaign platform prioritizes a mitigation of spending growth, the hiring of hundreds of new police officers and actions to spur economic growth. 

Cardenas notes how the city’s budget has far outpaced inflation over the past six to seven years and has vowed to tie spending growth to the annual rise in the Consumer Price Index, plus one percent of wiggle room.

The commissioner also said he thinks the city needs to better cut bureaucratic tape to enable more housing is built and increase business friendliness. He decried the recent rise in business license fees and called for a geographic pilot in underinvested areas exempting businesses from license fees to see how it would impact growth. 

Cardenas said his public safety strategy would include the hiring of 500 new police officers in his first year and a public safety accountability czar to examine crime data trends. 

Cardenas’ administration would also end discretionary overtime for police to save money and stop burnout. Those actions would be paired with investments in youth opportunity programs and violence interrupter roles. 

The commissioner’s campaign platform also includes providing resources to working families, such as childcare subsidies, city-sponsored kids programming and financial assistance for school supplies, as a strategy to ease the burden on parents and more naturally allow them to play a greater role in the reduction of “teen takeovers.” It also includes procurement to make the bidding processes for city contracts more competitive, as he believes fewer procurement processes that yield just a single bidder will get the city better deals. 

He stressed that he doesn’t want to see the government slashed but rather made more efficient. 

“I propose that we manage better so we … can afford all the things that we should be able to afford,” Cardenas said. “If we have more of our money going to cover the pension costs and more of the money going to all these other programs that have nothing to do with people, then we're doing a disservice to the taxpayers. We need to go back to the communities and put the value there.

Cardenas’ mayoral campaign committee was registered May 5 and has reported no large donations worth at least $1,000. In the second quarter of 2026, which ran from April 1 to June 30, Cardenas’ county board campaign committee brought in $11,000 in reportable large donations.

His county board committee had $163,323 on hand at the end of the first quarter.

Candidates will submit nominating petitions for the 2027 municipal election this fall.