Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, lost her reelection bid to former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who are headed to a runoff election on April 4 after no candidates received a majority of votes.
The race was officially nonpartisan, which means Republican, Democrat, and independent voters could all vote.
With 93 percent of votes counted at 10:33 p.m. Eastern Time, Vallas garnered 33.9 percent of the vote, Johnson 20.3 percent, and Lightfoot 16.9 percent, The New York Times
reported.
Speaking to supporters on Feb. 28, Lightfoot said she called Vallas and Johnson to congratulate them.
“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights, and we put this city on a better path,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot is the first incumbent Chicago mayor to lose a reelection bid since 1983, when Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, lost her Democratic primary.
As a then-outsider to politics, Lightfoot ran for mayor in 2019 promising to end government corruption, becoming the first black female Chicago mayor in America’s history. But the ethics of her reelection campaign came into question when it was found that the campaign attempted to recruit students at Chicago Public Schools and City Colleges in exchange for school credit. She later apologized, saying it was a “bad mistake” made by a young staffer in her campaign, the Chicago Sun-Times
reported.
Lightfoot took office in May 2019 as the 56th mayor of Chicago. Her four-year term was plagued by a long strike by the teachers union, clashes with the police union, and soaring violent homicide rates in a city with some of the most stringent gun laws in the country.
A heavily criticized aspect of her administration was the rising crime in Chicago under its governance. From January 2019 to the end of 2022, Chicago’s murder rate increased by 39 percent, theft by 37 percent, robbery by 13 percent, motor vehicle theft by 139 percent, and shooting by 32 percent, according to a
report by the Chicago Police Department.
Criminal sexual assault decreased by 2 percent, aggravated battery decreased by 6 percent, and burglary decreased by 21 percent.
In her concession speech, Lightfoot defended her administration’s record in handling crime, saying that it had started “making real progress on public safety.”
“I’m grateful that we worked together to remove a record number of guns off our streets, reduced homicides, and started making real progress on public safety,” she
said.
In a previous interview, she said that external circumstances made it difficult for her to govern.
“I think no sane person wants to try to govern through, hopefully, a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, an economic meltdown, a civic unrest following the murder of George Floyd and an increase in crime across the city,” she
said in a Feb. 21 interview with The New Yorker.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
