In this March 20, 2020, file photo, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot listens during a news conference in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)/Police tape marks off a Chicago street on June 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford)
On Feb. 28, Lori Lightfoot became Chicago’s first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose re-election. The mainstream media is blaming her loss on the rising crime in the Windy City.
Crime did take center stage during the campaign.
Chicago experienced a recorded 695 murders at the end of 2022 and 804 in 2021. 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 Chicago Police Department’s end-of-year report. On top of this, in the first three weeks of 2023, crime rates in the city rose by 61 percent, compared to last year, according to Chicago police.
“Lightfoot has faced heavy criticism for rampant crime that has plagued Chicago during her tenure, as well as for injecting race into the election and Under Lightfoot,” The New York Post reported.
The Financial Times described the race as being “dominated by crime.”
Democrat Lightfoot had stood as a first– the first Black woman to run the city and the first openly gay person to be mayor. The attorney has been serving as the 56th mayor of Chicago since 2019.
Lightfoot, 60, received only 16.4 percent of the vote, finishing behind the former head of Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, a Black Democrat. Vallas took 35 percent of the vote, and Johnson garnered 20.2 percent. The two will face off in an April 4 runoff election to determine who will be the city’s next mayor.
Vallas, who is white, was endorsed by Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police. He has called for adding hundreds of police officers to the force.
The bottom line, Lightfoot has lost. And like the Republicans have done for years in the Democrat-run city, portrayed Chicago as overrun by crime. This time, the portrayal plagued Lightfoot’s campaign.
According to Northwestern University political science professor Jaime Domínguez, it’s the first time in 20 years that he’s seen public safety be “front and center” in a Chicago mayoral election.
One factor, Domínguez pointed out, is that crime is no longer largely isolated to some predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Crime has now encroached on white neighborhoods.
“Historically, it was primarily a pocketed matter. It was still pernicious, and candidates spoke to it, but it didn’t really affect areas where you see crime occurring now,” Dominguez told the Associated Press. “That has been blown up. It’s just, it’s everywhere.”
Lightfoot placed her lack of popularity on other factors. Prior to the election, Lightfoot alleged in the New Yorker that her critics didn’t want to see “a Black woman” in leadership.
“I am a Black woman — let’s not forget,” she told the outlet. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”
“The same forces that didn’t want Harold Washington to succeed, they’re still here,” she told the New Yorker, referring to Washington, a Democrat who was elected in 1983 and became the first African American to be elected as the city’s mayor. “The last time we had an African American mayor in power was 40 years ago. It’s important for us not to repeat history.”
In this March 20, 2020, file photo, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot listens to a question after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a shelter-in-place order to combat the spread of the covid-19 virus, during a news conference in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)/Police tape marks off a Chicago street as officers investigate the scene of a fatal shooting in the city’s South Side on June 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford)
