Chicago mayor’s race: Runoff appears seemingly as Lori Lightfoot fights to carry on

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is preventing for reelection Tuesday after a history-making however tumultuous 4 years in workplace. A bruising marketing campaign is threatening to make Lightfoot the town’s first one-term mayor in 40 years.

In 2019, Lightfoot turned the primary Black lady and first brazenly homosexual mayor of the third-largest U.S. metropolis, and solely the second lady to carry the workplace. However Lightfoot, a former prosecutor and head of a metropolis police evaluate board, now faces severe challenges from a number of candidates, who’ve hammered her over a spike in crime that started through the COVID-19 pandemic and a management type they are saying is unnecessarily combative.

With polls closed, not one of the 9 candidates is more likely to obtain over 50% of the vote to win the election outright. That will pressure an April runoff between the highest two vote-getters. Lightfoot will not be amongst them.

Lightfoot has touted her document of investing in neighborhoods and supporting employees, equivalent to by growing the minimal wage to $15 an hour. She additionally notes that the town has navigated unprecedented challenges, together with the pandemic and its financial and public security fallout, and protests over policing.

“The world could be very totally different than it was 4 years in the past. I imagine that I am nonetheless the precise individual and I believe the voters will validate that, however we have been by rather a lot,” Lightfoot stated after a rally on the town’s West Facet through the remaining days earlier than the election. “We won’t return.”

Lightfoot’s high rivals embrace Paul Vallas, who has run because the law-and-order candidate with assist from the town’s police union and guarantees to place a whole lot extra officers on the streets, and U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who compelled then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a runoff in 2015. Brandon Johnson is endorsed by the Chicago Lecturers Union, a bunch that has tangled with Lightfoot, together with throughout an 11-day academics strike in her first yr in workplace.

If Lightfoot loses Tuesday, she can be one of many few big-city mayors in current historical past to lose a reelection bid. That is significantly true within the first spherical of voting, when incumbents usually get pleasure from a bonus. However this election is exclusive due to the ten largest U.S. cities, Chicago is the one place with out mayoral time period limits, which can make voters in different cities extra keen to provide an incumbent yet one more time period.

Lightfoot is also the primary mayor of a serious U.S. metropolis to face reelection following the pandemic, the recession and the crime wave that is occurred in lots of locations. These components weighed on some voters as they made their selections Tuesday.

“Lori has had her probability,” stated Lonnell Jolly, a 45-year-old customer support consultant who lives on the West Facet and voted for businessman Willie Wilson. “Since Lori Lightfoot has been in workplace, it looks as if crime has gotten worse.”

Lindsey Hegarty, a 30-year-old paralegal who lives on Chicago’s North Facet, stated she backed Johnson as a result of “he appeared like probably the most progressive candidate on points like policing, psychological well being” and public transit.

Race is also an element as candidates court docket votes within the extremely segregated metropolis, which is intently divided in inhabitants amongst Black, Hispanic and White residents. Lightfoot, Johnson and 5 different candidates are Black, although Lightfoot — who’s hoping robust assist from Black voters will assist propel her to victory — has argued that she is the one Black candidate who can win. Garcia, the one Latino within the race, can be Chicago’s first Hispanic mayor, whereas Vallas is the one White candidate within the discipline.

Lightfoot has accused Vallas of utilizing “the final word canine whistle” by saying his marketing campaign is about “taking again our metropolis,” and of cozying as much as the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, whom she calls a racist. A current Chicago Tribune story additionally discovered Vallas’s Twitter account had favored racist tweets and tweets that mocked Lightfoot’s look and referred to her as masculine.

Vallas stated he wasn’t chargeable for the favored tweets, which he referred to as “abhorrent,” and advised somebody had improperly accessed his account.

However Lightfoot and a few of her supporters see a number of the criticism of her management as motivated by racism, sexism and anti-gay sentiment.

“No different mayor has been requested to vary this metropolis inside 4 years,” stated metropolis Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who’s Black, and famous that White mayors like Emanuel and Richard Daley served a number of phrases. “After we get within the sport, the foundations change.”

At a weekend marketing campaign cease, Vallas stated he’s targeted on issues like public security, Chicago’s “demoralized” police division and the variety of residents “fleeing” the town’s faculty district.

“It is all a product of unhealthy management,” Vallas stated.

A former metropolis finances director who additionally led faculty programs in Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia, Vallas misplaced a 2019 bid for mayor. This time, he has been laser-focused on public security, saying law enforcement officials who left the pressure underneath Lightfoot’s administration will return if he is elected.

It appears to have resonated with voters, equivalent to Antwoin Jackson, who’re involved about an uptick in crime. Jackson stated he supported Lightfoot 4 years in the past however forged his poll for Vallas in Tuesday’s election as a result of he stated Lightfoot “didn’t maintain management over the violence within the communities.” Jackson stated he feels significantly unsafe when driving public transit.