On Tuesday, Vallas and Johnson’s strongest areas were in the city’s northside, which is more White, while Lightfoot turned in her strongest performance in the city’s predominantly Black areas to the south and west. While Vallas’ message bears similarities to Adams’ in New York, the messengers are different - Adams is Black and Vallas is White. Karen Bass defeated Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer who had pumped more than $100 million into a campaign focused on law and order.īass defeated Caruso in part by offering her own plans to increase the number of police officers on the streets and declare a state of emergency to address a crisis of homelessness. The dynamics in Chicago echoed mayor’s races in New York City in 2021, won by Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, and Los Angeles in 2022, where then-Rep. On Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown announced he will resign in March - which will allow the next mayor to install new leadership at the department. But in such a fractured field, any foothold of support is critical. Chicago is a diverse, overwhelmingly blue city, with 83% of the electorate backing the Democratic ticket in the 2020 presidential election. His tough-on-crime pitch also attracted more conservative voters. The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Vallas - a former schools chief in Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Connecticut, who ran on a pro-police message and pointed to officers in his family. It was the latest ugly chapter in years-long tension between police and Lightfoot’s administration as she sought to rein in overtime spending. Lightfoot infuriated police last year, in a fight focused on overtime pay in a department that had struggled to retain officers and recruit new ones, when she said officers had an “incredible” amount of time off. “Chicago is ready to break with the politics of the past that ignore the needs of our students, their families and school communities,” union President Stacy Davis Gates said of Tuesday’s election results. The union last fall endorsed Johnson, who was relatively unknown outside his Cook County commission district - propelling him in the nine-candidate field. Last year, the two were at loggerheads again as Lightfoot pushed teachers to return to classrooms despite rising Covid-19 cases. Most importantly, the pugnacious Lightfoot brawled with teacher and police unions before and during the Covid-19 pandemic - battles that ultimately led both groups to back rivals in the 2023 mayor’s race.Ī 2019 fight with the Chicago Teachers Union over pay and class size as Lightfoot sought to curb spending led to an 11-day strike. And while her toughness was an asset on the campaign trail, it cost Lightfoot some of the allies she’d gained on her way to victory. She’d won an office that has long been a political lightning rod without a durable base of support. However, the results of 2019’s first round - with the first-place finisher qualifying for the runoff with the support of less than one-in-five Chicago voters - proved to be an omen of Lightfoot’s future difficulties. “We can and will remake Chicago,” Lightfoot pledged on the night of her victory. She trounced Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president and a long-time Chicago political mainstay, in the runoff as voters sought change. In 2019, Lightfoot was the surprise first-place finisher in another crowded mayoral primary with just 17.5% of the vote. The race’s focus on crime and public safety showed how voters’ attitudes and the city’s concerns had shifted in the four years since Lightfoot had campaigned as a police reformer who would overhaul the way officers are supervised and disciplined. She is the first full-term incumbent Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose reelection. The result was a municipal election in which Lightfoot finished third in the nine-person field, with the support of only about one-in-six Chicago voters. And though Lightfoot’s management of the coronavirus pandemic was popular, the city’s economic rebound has been sluggish. Chicago’s public transportation system remains saddled with service gaps and delays. Voters, too, were uneasy: Violent crime spiked on Lightfoot’s watch. Lightfoot had clashed with police and teachers’ unions, while developing frosty relationships with city aldermen and Illinois’ Democratic governor - leaving her with few influential allies. Chicago is now the third major city in recent years with a mayoral election that will test attitudes - among a heavily Democratic electorate - toward crime and policing. Four years later, the Second City’s voters demonstrated how drastically its political dynamics have shifted when Lightfoot on Tuesday failed to finish in the top two and advance to the April runoff.
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