Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Blames Election Defeat On Racism and Gender

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed racism and her gender for her landslide defeat in her re-election bid, as Chicagoans tired  of the increasing crime on her watch celebrated her fall from “political rock star to rock bottom.”

“I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” she replied when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly.

But she called being Chicago’s mayor “the honor of a lifetime.”

“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path,” Lightfoot said, as she encouraged her fellow mayors around the US not to fear being bold.

Among large criticism for the crime wave, homelessness and other problems plaguing the city, the mayor had also injected race into the run-up to the election.

“I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” Lightfoot, 60, told the New Yorker in a piece that ran Saturday. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”

The Chicago Tribune labeled her defeat a “political embarrassment” and argued that crime “skyrocketed” on her watch.

Chicago saw 695 murders at the end of 2022 and 804 in 2021 – a level not seen in the city over the last 25 years.
AP

“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,’” the Tribune said in its analysis of how she 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.”

Violent crime in the city spiked by 40% since she promised during her inaugural address to end the “epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, holds children hostage to fear in their own homes,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.