Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago Loses Her Bid for Re-election

[Polybius]

Source: NY Times

CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago lost her bid for a second term on Tuesday, The Associated Press said, a resounding defeat that reflected widespread dissatisfaction from voters over her handling of crime and policing in the nation’s third-largest city.

Four years ago, Ms. Lightfoot made history as the first Black woman to be elected mayor of Chicago when she swept all 50 of the city’s wards. But she saw her popularity plunge during the coronavirus pandemic as Chicago suffered a spike in violent crime, with looting and destruction on its famed Magnificent Mile in 2020.

The two candidates to emerge from Tuesday’s first round of voting — Paul Vallas, a former public schools executive, and Brandon Johnson, a county board commissioner — will advance to a runoff election on April 4.

The race showcased the political divide that has emerged in some of America’s largest, most liberal cities, where hard-on-crime policies have increasingly resonated with voters.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/us/chicago-mayoral-election-lightfoot-vallas.html

[nycbos]

1. As an adopted Chicagoan...

... I'm more disappointed by the abysmal turn out. I'm watching the stream from ABC. They said around 32%.

[MichMan]

2. Mayor Lightfoot did say that anyone not voting for her should stay home and not vote.

[nycbos]

3. I saw an article today that said 100,000 didn't return their mail in ballots.

And I didn't vote for Lightfoot. Partly due to he comments about people saying home.

[Cha]

4. That's ridiculous & not very

smart.

[Jose Garcia]

23. 83% of those who did vote chose a candidate other than Lightfoot

[DENVERPOPS]

5. LOL

Like Paul Vallas, (a former public schools executive,) and Brandon Johnson, (a county board commissioner)

know jack shit about running a city the size of Chicago, and even less about fighting crime, given those credentials.....

[nycbos]

6. Vallas was the city budget director too.

And the Cook County board isn't a chump change position.

[DENVERPOPS]

7. That would certainly help

but I wouldn't think it would be of assistance if the Crime Problem is an issue...........


Then again, the crime problem probably is accelerated by the profound massive inflation sweeping the nation because of the Record Profiteering being done by the Fascist Corporations in every area of the economy.

Food, Utilities, Gasoline, Rents, Health Care, Pharmaceuticals, etc etc, especially in the necessity areas of the people's budgets, and that is caused entirely by the Republican Party and their atrocious Politicians and their uber wealthy Oligarch campaign donations.

We somehow have to get out of this downward Republican death spiral the U.S. is caught up in......

I often think that these Republican Politicians must not have kids or grand kids.........or don't care about anything but themselves......

[nycbos]

8. The CPD currently has more than 1000 vacancies in the patrol division.

Officers are not on normal schedule. People are smoking on the weed inside the trains. Someone asked me for a cigarette on a train platform. The service is terrible. While the city certainly had problems before the pandemic things like that didn't happen pre-COIVD. You don't have to be a racist Fox News viewer to say that's messed up.


I didn't support him, but I understand the appeal of someone like Vallas. I am not a fan of Johnson either for the record.

[oldsoftie]

28. "Hiring the right people" is what real leaders do. He needs to hire a crime expert

What exeperience did Barack Obama have with medical insurance? None. But he knew who to hire.
Trump was an example of NOT knowing who to hire

[live love laugh]

9. Budgeting is not his forte.

Last edited Wed Mar 1, 2023, 01:47 AM - Edit history (1)

From Chicago to New Orleans and Philadelphia, Vallas’ budget disasters left taxpayers holding the bag. In Chicago, Vallas fostered the pension crisis taxpayers are paying for today. He won legislative approval to delay payments into the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers’ pension fund. Pushing those payments into the future, he proclaimed himself a hero for ending with a $1 billion surplus. Vallas traded CPS and pension fund stability for his short-term bragging rights. Today, that reckless bargain means Chicago homeowners shovel more than a half-billion dollars a year in property taxes into the pension fund hole Vallas created.

Vallas continued smoke-and-mirrors budgeting as he moved to head school districts around the country. Four months after he told the Philadelphia City Council he created a balanced school budget (and a month after his contract was renewed), the district suddenly revealed a $73 million deficit. Vallas was soon fired. In New Orleans, four consecutive years of audit failures under Vallas’s watch revealed “sloppy record keeping” and millions of dollars unaccounted for.

[Celerity]

12. wow, sounds like Chicago is for a rough ride atm

[DENVERPOPS]

13. Lol, to solve the crime problem,

does that mean he is likely to delay payments to the PD's Retirement Fund????????? (sarcasm, people)

These politicians have a way of creating a disastrous nightmare, leaving just in the nick of time before it is revealed, and progressing to another job, usually higher paying and with more status and responsibility.

I have seen the same exact thing, countless times, in the Corporate world.....................
It's depressing..............

I firmly and completely believe: "We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"...........(regretfully).......

Good people, when they can't afford to feed their families, do criminal things........

[frazzled]

10. This is no surprise

Lightfoot had a disapproval rate of 61% as mayor. I never voted for her last time (I was a Toni Preckwinkle advocate, a highly experienced woman in government and, in my opinion, the real progressive in that race. Lightfoot had no government experience and I didn’t see how a corporate attorney fit the bill).

That said, now we have two equally bad choices, imo, between Vallas and Johnson. I don’t even know if I want to vote, and I’ve never not voted.

[SunSeeker]

14. Johnson, backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, has pushed a more progressive agenda.

Last edited Wed Mar 1, 2023, 02:33 AM - Edit history (1)

While Vallas emphasizes cracking down on crime.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/02/28/vallas-johnson-take-early-lead-in-chicagos-mayoral-race/

They are both life long Democrats.

One of them must suit you better than the other.

Please vote. Always vote.

[ShazzieB]

17. Did you meant say "Vallas emphasizes cracking down on crime"?

I don't live in Chicago, so I don't get a vote. If I did, I think I'd lean toward Johnson, based on the little bit I know about both of them. I'd have to do quite a bit of research to decide for sure, but Vallas' budgetary history definitely gives me pause.

Good luck, Chicago. Whoever you pick, I sure hope they do a halfway decent job for the city. Chicago needs a good mayor!

[SunSeeker]

18. Yes. nt

[orleans]

21. i used to hear vallas on joan esposito's show

she had him on every week. (she said she stopped having him on when he decided to run for mayor)

anyway, i remember thinking for the longest time that he was a republican.
he drove me crazy, and i couldn't figure out why she had him on as a regular.

i really haven't paid attention to the candidates (i'm not in chgo either--i'm in the western burbs) but i'd never vote for vallas. ugh!

[myohmy2]

11. so...

...Lightfoot got the boot...

...

[shrike3]

15. One word rarely if ever mentioned while discussing crime in Chicago. Indiana.

Where buying a gun gets easier every day. There's a gun store just miles to the east of me. Illinois plates fill its parking lot every day. I don't know what the rules are if you're an out of state buyer. They must be easily overcome, given the amount of out of state customers.

I know it's not the sole reason for Chicago's crime problem. But access to guns is tough to address when you've got candy/gun stores on the other side of the border.

In 1974, 970 people were killed in Chicago. In 2022, 675 people were slain. So violence and crime have been around for a long time in that city. The violence in 2020 brought the inner racist in many whites, I'm afraid.

[Middlevoter]

19. I'm sorry, I can't buy that

Chicago's problems come mainly from lack of prosecution on violent crimes and complete lack of prosecution on gun crimes. Laws don't make sense unless you enforce them. And as far as the white supremacy angle, the data doesn't support that at all. Most of the murders are inner city conflicts, and most are gang related. Hopefully they can find a solution to these problems.

[SunSeeker]

22. Chicago's poor need a college education and good jobs.

Chicago used to be the #1 industrial center in the U.S. Now its growing industries are health-related and IT, which doesn't help the uneducated poor, who used to be able to get low skill but relatively good paying factory jobs. Now they can only get minimum wage jobs as fast food workers, etc. Hopefully the Infrastructure Act will be a big help to Chicago.

You're right, Chicago's gun laws need better enforcement, especially in high crime neighborhoods. Folks in those neighborhoods are the first to say so, and are even suing over that. https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-pritzker-illinois-gun-laws-foid-tom-geoghegan-michael-pfleger-20220906-aaeaigxtmzb3nncnfexomrniqq-story.html Hopefully they can shake loose some funding for that.

But Gary, Indiana being basically a suburb of Chicago does not help matters. Less than half the guns used in Illinois crime come from Illinois. https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-shooting-guns-illinois-gun-laws/11937013/

[shrike3]

35. Guns are everywhere in Indiana. No need to put it all on Gary.

I know people who live out in the middle of cornfields and are armed to the teeth. You ask them what exactly they are afraid of and they can't tell you. I remember overhearing one man say that he was on his way to Walmart (fifty miles from Gary), realized he'd left his gun at home and was "a nervous wreck" until he'd finished his shopping and got out of there.

[SunSeeker]

36. Wow, I can't imagine living with than kind of paranoia.

Can't go to Walmart without a gun? That's nuts.

[shrike3]

37. I know. It's only going to get worse.

There's a whole new generation of men, young men, white men, who are getting indoctrinated in this kind of thinking. I'm on FB with one (he's a relative) and he was going on about the complexity of gun categories. "Where do you draw the line?" he said.

I said, "We draw lines all the time. It's what civilized societies do. Is it perfect? No. But we don't just throw up our hands and do nothing." He had no answer for that.

[SunSeeker]

38. Good way to answer him.

[oldsoftie]

26. Really; the DA probably needs to get the hook as well

Lax prosecution just encourages MORE crime. Proven everywhere.

[The Mouth]

30. Used a gun in a crime, go to jail forever

or at least 30 years. Period, no exceptions, no exclusions, no excuses.

That would be the place to start.

[oldsoftie]

31. I'm about to that point myself. By God there IS a deterrent at some point.

People talk about the death penalty not being a deterrent but we've never really tried to see if it was. When you are really just doing life because they wait 20-30 yrs to DO it.
But for the DP, the law must be changed before I'd push for 6mo executions.

[shrike3]

32. You're entitled to not buy it. Chicago's problems do go back decades

Almost a hundred years, to the 20s in fact. No one ever seems to have the means or the will to fix them. I have no idea how well the new mayor will do. I do predict that he will be despised, in time. The only question is, how soon?

I bring up my state, Indiana, because so many guns flow across state line. Hoosiers mock Chicago's gun laws while providing a good number of its criminals with firearms. Given the way things are going in this state, it'll become even easier.

[JI7]

16. They might need someone like Karen Bass

Someone who is kind of low key but knows all the policy and procedures and other "boring" things.

She has been able to get things done when it comes to the homeless issue. Not that it's solved but you can see changes taking place.

But I do think the issue in Chicago is more complicated .

[SunSeeker]

20. Karen Bass has a thriving economy and rich tax base to help her here in CA.

Chicago still hasn't been able to shake off the rust belt issues that have plagued it for decades now. It boomed in the era of industrialization, but declined during post-industrialization. Chicago was, for a long time, the #1 industrial center in the U.S. Now its growing industries are health-related and IT, which doesn't help the uneducated poor, who used to be able to get low skill but relatively good paying factory jobs. Now they can only get minimum wage jobs as fast food workers, etc. Hopefully the Infrastructure Act will be a big help to Chicago.

[beaglelover]

39. Really? What has she done? The homeless problem is definitely worse here in the SFV

area of L.A. since she took office. Not saying it's her fault, but I have yet to see any improvement since she's been in office. The homeless are now camping in the center median under the overpasses which makes driving at night here very dangerous. The new tiny home villages built around L.A. did seem to help get a lot of the homeless off of the streets, but things appear to be getting back to how bad it was in 2020.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. Let's Go Brandon?

or

Let's Go Paul?

[oldsoftie]

25. This has to be good for Chicago. She just wasnt up to the job

I think Johnson is the better of the two, but I'm not up to speed fully on either.

[The Grand Illuminist]

27. Lori Lightfoot is becoming the new Cynthia McKinney

nt

[BlueManiac]

29. Maybe 2024

will find her better place to use her talents on the nationwide stage. She still has a lot to offer America afterall.

[Polybius]

34. Nationwide stage?

As in what, VP?

[lees1975]

33. It appears that Vallas has hit the limit of his support

and that Johnson will be able to pull together enough of a coalition to win.