Lori Lightfoot has been elected mayor of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune reports:
Lori Lightfoot won a resounding victory Tuesday night to become both the first African-American woman and openly gay person elected mayor of Chicago, dealing a stinging defeat to a political establishment that has reigned over City Hall for decades.
After waging a campaign focused on upending the vaunted Chicago political machine, Lightfoot dismantled one of its major cogs by dispatching Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, whose candidacy had been hobbled in part by an anti-incumbent mood among voters and an ongoing federal corruption investigation at City Hall.
With roughly 97 percent of the city’s precincts reporting, Lightfoot had swept all 50 of Chicago’s wards, winning 74 percent of the unofficial vote to 26 percent for Preckwinkle, a 28-year officeholder who prior to her eight years as the county’s chief executive served 19 years as a Hyde Park alderman.
Make no mistake: the voters of Chicago have voted for change. Mayor-elect Lightfoot won every ward by an overwhelming margin. My own ward voted in higher proportions for Lightfoot than the city did as a whole. We’re tired of being used as a piggybank.
Now we’ll see if she can deliver. I have my doubts. The mayor’s office is just the beginning of the machine. It extends through every city department and every public employees’ union and any reform will be fought to the death.
Rahm Emanuel, armed with name recognition from years in Washington, money largely raised from outside the city, and endorsements from machine politicians, waltzed away with his first mayor’s election and walked into a buzzsaw. Chicago is a city that has had decades of incompetent management and has tremendous ingrained bad habits. After three terms of Emanuel as mayor, that buzzsaw is even bigger. Every problem has become worse.
My ward elected a new city councilman, too. Political newcomer Samantha Nugent defeated Robert Murphy 53% to 47%. That was a change, too. For the first time in 54 years someone not a member of the Laurino family will represent us in the City Council. We’ll see if she’s up to the task. I wish her the best.
The problems of the 39th Ward are thorny, too. Property taxes are rising to confiscatory levels and Chicago’s higher sales tax makes it hard for retailers to survive. We’re just steps from the city limits. And it’s not just a matter of taxes. The real problem is that we’re not receiving value for what we’re paying. Planes are being rerouted over our homes, every city project in the ward is bungled, and, increasingly, crime is coming right to our door.
Update
To show you how complete Mayor-elect Lightfoot’s victory was, she didn’t just carry every ward.
She carried all of Chicago’s 2,069 precincts with the exception of a handful of precinct’s in Toni Preckwinkle’s home 4th Ward.
Perhaps the least worst choice, but clearly you now live in Detroit West, and in you lifetime Chicago will become a shambles.
You need to get over your inertia and move to some rural Southern location.
I wish her well. I hold no lofty expectations.
Could it have been the Smollett effect? Preckwinkle stayed by her Foxx despite one of the most blatant fixes of justice in living memory.
I think that explains a few percentage points. Not a 50 point difference. This election was a mandate for reform. Now we wait to see what kind of reform Mayor Lightfoot will demand and what kind she can get.
Rest assured that Mayor Lightfoot will deliver, all right. The contents of your wallet and bank account to herself and those she feels are more deserving than rich ol’ white folks.
She will also handcuff the Chicago police even more than they are now. I see her as Chicago’s version of baltimore’s Stephanie Rawlings. Perhaps even more so.