Each winter, Chicago’s annual “You Name a Snowplow” contest brings out the creative, the cutesy, the sentimental, the painfully punny.
This year, the clear winner is political. The new snowplow is named “Abolish ICE.”
“Abolish ICE,” chosen soon after the Trump administration conducted an aggressive and broadly unpopular immigration crackdown in Chicago, came in first among more than 13,300 proposed snowplow names offered by the public, city officials said this week. Nearly 40,000 people cast votes on 25 finalists.
In second place was “Stephen Coldbert,” named after the talk-show host who spent his formative comedy years in Chicago. The third place was “Pope Frío XIV,” a homage to Pope Leo, who hails from the south suburbs of Chicago.
“Abolish ICE” will soon be stamped on the side of a snowplow truck and could be spotted around the streets of Chicago the next time a snowstorm hits. Chicago is divided into six “snow districts,” and each year, a new truck in each of the six districts is adorned with the name chosen by voters.
The contest, which began in 2023 under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, has never turned quite so newsy.
In previous years, the top entries have nodded to Chicago’s accomplishments in architecture (Mies van der Snow); city-leveling disasters (Mrs. O’Leary’s Plow); a popular landmark whose years-old name change remains unacknowledged by residents (Sears Plower); and heroic Polish-born figures of the Revolutionary War celebrated mostly in Chicago (Casimir Plowaski).
People who nominated the six winning entries will be offered city-themed swag at an unveiling event at a salt dome, a facility for storage of road salt, and the chance to pose with the snowplow they named. The names of those who proposed this year’s winning entries have yet to be made public.
Ryan Gage, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation, referred questions about the “Abolish ICE” entry to the mayor’s office.
The annual contest, he said, is “a great opportunity to showcase the unmatched creativity and civic pride from Chicagoans and highlight the hard work of the city staff in clearing the roads of ice and snow.”
Chicago’s fleet of powder-blue snow-fighting vehicles is robust and organized, a welcome sight on the city’s streets throughout the winter. There are more than 300 trucks that clear snow and dump salt on thousands of miles of roads around Chicago, and more than 400,000 tons of salt is kept in strategically placed piles around the city, the streets department said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished, thanked Chicagoans for joining the contest so enthusiastically.
“We are grateful and inspired by the record-breaking participation in the contest this year,” Mr. Johnson, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
The post Chicago’s Snowplow Naming Contest Got Political. The Pick: ‘Abolish ICE.’ appeared first on New York Times.
