Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot finished a distant third in the city’s mayoral election on Tuesday. The night was won by former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, who garnered just under 34 percent of the vote. Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who is also a Chicago Teachers Union organizer, came in second with just over 20 percent of the vote. Vallas and Johnson will square off in five weeks, on April 4, to see who will become the next mayor of the Windy City.
Lightfoot, the first black woman and openly gay mayor in the city’s history, could only manage to secure about 17 percent of the vote, despite being an incumbent. It would seem as if the city weren’t happy with Lightfoot’s leadership.
It was an early night for the soon-to-be ex-Chicago mayor, as she addressed supporters before 9:00 p.m.
“Obviously, we didn’t win the election. But I stand here with my head held high and my heart full of thanks,” Lightfoot said. “You will not be defined by how you fall. You will be defined by how hard you work and how much you do for other people.”
Chicago voters were clearly unhappy with how much Lightfoot did for them. Her term was marred by violent crime, an exodus of industry from Chicago, and onerous Covid-19 restrictions. It was also marked by some truly bizarre behavior on the part of Lightfoot.
For instance, in May 2021, Lightfoot announced that she was unhappy that her version of “diversity” was not represented in Chicago’s press corps and decided, for a time, that she wouldn’t do interviews or take questions from white reporters.
“I have been struck since my first day on the campaign trail back in 2018 by the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets, editorial boards, the political press corps, and yes, the City Hall press corps specifically,” she said at the time. “If I as the black woman mayor, the first-ever, don’t challenge us, the collective us, to do better, to really make sure that in every institution it reflects the diversity, nuance, and texture, then shame on me.”
Eventually, lawsuits over Lightfoot’s racist policy caused her to rethink the issue and respond to white, male reporters once again.
Another bizarre incident occurred in June 2021. An unhinged email that Lightfoot sent to City Hall staff surfaced in which Lightfoot lamented that she was not being allowed enough office time. To get her point across, the mayor typed, “I need office time everyday! I need office time everyday! I need office time everyday!…” more than a dozen times. Lightfoot then typed “Not just once a week or some days, but everyday!” again, over a dozen times in hopes of getting her message across.
But, her strange behavior aside, what troubled Windy City residents most about Lightfoot was the record crime that the city faced during her tenure. Even prior to taking office, Lightfoot signaled that she might not take crime very seriously when she referred to a spate of springtime shootings as “summer violence season.”
“We’re going to be heading soon into the summer violence season,” Lightfoot told CNN. “After that’s over, we’ll evaluate at that point, but I’m going to be working closely with the (police) superintendent and with his executive team to make sure that we keep our neighborhoods safe.”
But those neighborhoods never got safe under Lightfoot. Indeed, week after violent week, the city smashed records for murders and shootings. Lightfoot’s answer to that violence was to call for more gun control in a city and state already having some of the most stringent gun-control measures in America.
“For far too long, the rhetoric surrounding the gun debate has been dominated by excessive fearmongering by extremists and their sympathizers, which has led to decades of legislative inaction. Because of that inaction, we have witnessed people who do not value the sanctity of life take advantage of the ease of access to guns and senselessly take the lives of thousands of Americans in schools, churches, grocery stores, theaters, and countless other places where they should have been safe,” Lightfoot said in June 2022.
Perhaps nowhere was Lightfoot’s ineptitude more on display than with her handling of Covid-19, in which she bullied city workers into vaccinations and threatened citizens who would hold gatherings in their homes.
“Now I’ve directed Superintendent Brown to order all police districts to give special attention to these parties and this is how it’s gonna be: We will shut you down, we will cite you, and if we need to, we will arrest you and we will take you to jail,” Lightfoot threatened Chicagoans in May 2020. “We’re watching you.”
While Lightfoot’s tenure will end soon, the stain of her time in office will stay with Chicago residents for a long time.
