Sacked Mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, claims her Tuesday election loss was the result of her being a “Black woman in America.”
Lightfoot faced eight challengers in the election and finished Tuesday in third place, failing to muster enough support to continue on to a runoff election. Reporters questioned her on whether she believed she has been mistreated during the campaign process.
“I’m a Black woman in America. Of course,” she said.
“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path,” said Lightfoot Tuesday night, and added that her tenure as mayor of the city was “the honor of a lifetime.”
Lightfoot’s comments on election night echo the statements she made to the New Yorker last weekend.
“I am a Black woman,” she said. “Let’s not forget: certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”
Critics of Lightfoot argue that her election night loss was because of homelessness, skyrocketing crime, and her poor relationship with law enforcement.
Homicides in Chicago in 2021 rose the highest levels since 25 years, and outpaced other crime-plagued cities like Los Angeles and New York City. With Lightfoot not in the runoff election, city budget director and Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas will face off against Brandon Johnson, Cook County Board of Commissioners, in the runoff on April 4.
Neither candidate reached the 50% threshold needed to win the mayoral position on election night outright. Vallas was the closest, receiving 33% of the vote.
Vocal critics of Lightfoot blast her on Twitter, celebrating her loss on Tuesday evening
“There is hope for my home city yet,” wrote Fox News contributor and criminal defense attorney, Jonathan Turley. “Lori Lightfoot is out. The greatest potential improvement for the city since 1900 when the direction of the Chicago River was reversed.”
Stephen L. Miller, contributing editor at The Spectator, wrote, “Perhaps Lori Lightfoot would have won if thousands of her voters had not been shot.”
Lightfoot was labeled a “political embarrassment” by the Chicago Tribune which argued that crime had “skyrocketed” under her leadership.
“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,’” said the Tribune in its analysis of how the mayor 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,” said the publication.
The city’s violent crime spiked by 40% since Lightfoot promised in her inaugural address put an end to the “epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, holds children hostage to fear in their own homes,” reported the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to Chicago City Alderman Anthony Beale, Lightfoot 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,” said Beale to the Sun-Times.
“Coing 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.”
