Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed racism and her gender for her landslide defeat in her re-election bid, as Chicagoans wary of the rising crime of her watch celebrated her fall from “political rock star to rock bottom.”
“I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” she replied when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly.
But she called being Chicago’s mayor “the honor of a lifetime.”
“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path,” Lightfoot said, as she urged her fellow mayors around the US not to fear being bold.
Amid heavy criticism for the crime wave, homelessness and other troubles plaguing the city, the mayor had also injected race in the run-up to the election.
“I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” Lightfoot, 60, told the New Yorker in a piece that ran Saturday. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”
“I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said after losing her re-election bid.
Receiving only 16.4% of the vote, Lightfoot, 60, finished behind former head of Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson.
The Chicago Tribune called her loss a “political embarrassment” and argued that crime “skyrocketed” on her watch.
“Lightfoot campaigned for mayor in 2019 by arguing crime was too high, saying she wanted to make Chicago the ‘safest big city in the country,’” the Tribune said in its analysis of how she went from “political rock star to rock bottom.”
“But homicides, mostly from gun violence, spiked dramatically in 2020 and 2021 from 500 murders in 2019 to 776 and 804 in the next two years, respectively. Shootings and carjackings also skyrocketed.”
Violent crime in the city spiked by 40% since she promised during her inaugural address to end the “epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, holds children hostage to fear in their own homes,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The paper attributed some of her woes to bad timing – due to the pandemic and civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd.
“She almost embraced playing the heavy, shutting down the lakefront and admonishing people to stay home. It played into her dictatorial personality, inspiring an avalanche of hysterical memes the mayor was smart enough to embrace,” the paper said.
Chicago saw 695 murders at the end of 2022 and 804 in 2021 – a level not seen in the city over the last 25 years.
Chicago City Ald. Anthony Beale said for Lightfoot, it was “‘My way or the highway’ coming out of the gate.”
“Trying to destroy people instead of trying to work with people. Politics is a game of addition. It’s not a game of subtraction. All she did was subtract from Day One,” Beale told the Sun-Times.
“Coming out of the gate at inauguration, she tried to embarrass the entire City Council as being this corrupt body, and she was here to save the day. But it turns out she was the least transparent, least productive, least cooperative administration I have ever seen in my life.”
Gianno Caldwell, a Fox News political analyst whose brother was killed in Chicago last summer, applauded her defeat.
“The @LoriLightfoot experiment is officially over. Thank you, CHICAGO,” he wrote on Twitter.
Attorney and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley also chimed in, writing: “There is hope for my home city yet. Lori Lightfoot is out. The greatest potential improvement for the city since 1900 when the direction of the Chicago river was reversed.”
Lightfoot — the first black woman and first openly gay person to lead Chicago — has now became the first elected mayor to lose a re-election bid since 1983, when Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, lost her Democratic primary.
“The same forces that didn’t want Harold Washington to succeed, they’re still here,” she told the New Yorker, referring to the Democrat who was elected that year.
“The last time we had an African American mayor in power was 40 years ago. It’s important for us not to repeat history,” she added.
On Tuesday, Lightfoot received only 16.4% of the vote, finishing behind former head of Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson.
Paul Vallas has called for adding hundreds of police officers to combat out-of-control crime in Chicago.
Chicago mayoral candidate Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson celebrates with supporters.
Vallas, who won 35% of the vote, and Johnson, who got 20.2%, will head to an April 4 runoff election to determine who will be the next mayor.
Lightfoot’s demise comes after the Windy City recorded more than 800 murders in the Windy City in 2021, the most in a quarter-century.
The homicide rate dropped 14% in 2022 but remained nearly 40% higher than in 2019.
The city also saw more than 20,000 cases of theft in 2022, nearly double the amount of theft incidents in 2021, according to the Police Department’s end-of-year report.
In the first three weeks of this year, crime rates have skyrocketed by 61%, compared to last year, according to police.
Republicans gloated over Lightfoot’s loss, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting: “Lori Lightfoot. Crime doesn’t pay.”
Former Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones wrote: “Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot, just got the FOOT! Other Democrat mayors with run-away crime in your cities, take note. Even liberals are tired of being unsafe.”
* Article from: The New York Post