© Getty Images Chicago mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot speaks to the press outside of the polling place at the Saint Richard Catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois on April 2, 2019. - Chicago residents went to the polls in a runoff election Tuesday to elect the US city's first black female mayor in a historic vote centered on issues of economic equality, race and gun violence. Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle, both African-American women, are competing for the top elected post in the city. (Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP) (Photo credit should read KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

CHICAGO — Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot easily won the Chicago mayor's race Tuesday, earning support from every part of the city to defeat a longtime political insider and become the first black woman and openly gay person to lead the nation's third-largest city.

Lightfoot, who had never been elected to public office, delivered a commanding victory over Toni Preckwinkle, who served in the City Council for 19 years before becoming Cook County Board president. Preckwinkle also is chairwoman of the county Democratic Party.

Lightfoot promised to rid City Hall of corruption and help low-income and working-class people she said had been "left behind and ignored" by Chicago's political ruling class. It was a message that resonated with voters weary of political scandal and insider deals, and who said the city's leaders for too long have invested in downtown at the expense of neighborhoods.

"Together we can and will make Chicago a place where your zip code doesn't determine your destiny," Lightfoot told a cheering crowd at her victory party. "We can and we will break this city's endless cycle of corruption and never again — never ever — allow politicians to profit from elected positions."

She said people are seeing "a city reborn" — a place where race and "who you love" don't matter.

Chicago will become the largest U.S. city to have a black woman serve as mayor when Lightfoot is sworn in May 20. She will join seven other black women currently serving as mayors in major U.S. cities, including Atlanta and New Orleans, and will be the second woman to lead Chicago.

Preckwinkle said she called Lightfoot Tuesday night to congratulate her on a "hard-fought campaign."

"While I may be disappointed I'm not disheartened. For one thing, this is clearly a historic night," she told a crowd gathered in her South Side neighborhood. "Not long ago two African American women vying for this position would have been unthinkable. And while it may be true that we took two very different paths to get here, tonight is about the path forward."

Congratulations poured in for Lightfoot, 56, who has one daughter with her wife, Amy Eshleman.

Brian Johnson, CEO of Equality Illinois, said the civil rights organization for lesbian and gay people was "thrilled" with the outcome.

"This victory is historic, and it is also an undeniably proud moment for the LGBTQ community," Johnson said.

Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who's running for president in 2020, said on Twitter that Lightfoot "will be a terrific new leader for her city and in the community of American mayors."

Lightfoot emerged as the surprising leader in the first round of voting in February when 14 candidates were on the ballot to succeed Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who decided against running for a third term.

Lightfoot seized on outrage over a white police officer's fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald to launch her reformer campaign. She got in the race even before Emanuel announced he wouldn't seek re-election amid criticism for initially resisting calls to release video of the shooting.

"I'm not a person who decided I would climb the ladder of a corrupt political party," Lightfoot said during a debate last month. "I don't hold the title of committeeman, central committeeman, boss of the party."

Preckwinkle countered that her opponent lacks the necessary experience for the job.

"This is not an entry-level job," Preckwinkle said repeatedly during the campaign.

Joyce Ross, 64, a resident of the city's predominantly black West Side who is a certified nursing assistant, cast her ballot Tuesday for Lightfoot. Ross said she believes Lightfoot will be better able to clean up the police department and curb the city's violence.

She was also bothered by Preckwinkle's association with longtime Alderman Ed Burke, who was indicted earlier this year on charges he tried to shake down a restaurant owner who wanted to build in his ward.

"My momma always said birds of a feather flock together," Ross said.

Truly Gannon, a 39-year old mother of four who works as a dietitian, said she wasn't bothered by stories that portrayed Preckwinkle as an insider aligned with questionable politicians like Burke. She supported Preckwinkle, based on her experience.

"I'm not sure Lightfoot would be able to handle the job like Preckwinkle," she said.

The campaign between the two women got off to a contentious start, with Preckwinkle's advertising focusing on Lightfoot's work as a partner at Mayer Brown, one of the nation's largest law firms, and tagging her as a "wealthy corporate lawyer."

Preckwinkle also tried to cast Lightfoot as an insider for working in police oversight posts under Emanuel and police oversight, procurement and emergency communications posts under Mayor Richard M. Daley.

But Preckwinkle had to spend much of her campaign answering for her ties to Chicago's political establishment, including Burke.

Despite the barbs on the campaign trail, the two advanced similar ideas to boost the city's deeply troubled finances, which include an estimated $250 million budget deficit next year and billions in unfunded pension liabilities.

Both candidates expressed support for a casino in Chicago and changing the state's income tax system to a graduated tax, in which higher earners are taxed at a higher rate — two measures lawmakers have tried for unsuccessfully for years to pass.

___

Associated Press writer Don Babwin contributed to this report.



</s>Lori Lightfoot, 56, will become Chicago's second ever female mayor

Chicago has elected its first black female - and openly gay - mayor.

Lori Lightfoot won each of the city's 50 wards in a stunning victory, beating political veteran and Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle - who is also an African-American woman.

The former federal prosecutor pledged to address violence in the US city and make it a "place where your zip code doesn't determine your destiny".

Ms Lightfoot, 56, who has never before been elected to public office, will be the second woman to lead Chicago.

There are currently seven other black women serving as mayors in major US cities.

She has described herself as "an out and proud black lesbian" and said her campaign created a "movement for change".

The 56-year-old will succeed mayor Rahm Emanuel, an ex-White House chief of staff to Barack Obama, who decided not to run for a third term.

Ms Lightfoot said: "We can and we will build trust between our people and our brave police officers so that the communities and police trust each other, not fear each other.

"We can and we will break this city's endless cycle of corruption... and never again, never ever allow politicians to profit from elected positions."

Ms Lightfoot will be sworn in on 20 May.

In 2016, Chicago recorded 762 homicides - the highest number in two decades - but the killings dropped to 550 in 2018.

US media reports there has been a decrease in homicides in the city compared to the same period last year, with murders down 30% in the first three months of the year.</s>Lori Lightfoot celebrates at her election night rally at the Hilton Chicago after defeating Toni Preckwinkle in the Chicago mayoral election, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Lightfoot made history becoming the first black woman and openly gay person to be elected mayor

Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot’s resounding victory was a clear call for change at City Hall and a historic repudiation of the old-style, insider politics that have long defined the nation’s third-largest city.

Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who’d never been elected to public office, defeated Cook County Board President and longtime City Council member Toni Preckwinkle on Tuesday with backing from voters across the city. Late results showed Lightfoot, 56, winning every one of the city’s 50 wards.

READ MORE: A Surrey Mountie’s tale of reconciling her family’s history with the LGBTQ+ ‘purge’

Lightfoot also made history, becoming the first black woman and the first openly gay person to be elected Chicago mayor. Chicago will become the largest U.S. city to have a black woman serve as mayor when Lightfoot is sworn in May 20. She will join seven other black women currently serving as mayors in major U.S. cities, including Atlanta and New Orleans, and will be the second woman to lead Chicago.

“Out there tonight a lot of little girls and boys are watching. They’re watching us, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot told a jubilant crowd at a downtown hotel. “They’re seeing a city reborn.”

She pledged to make Chicago “a place where your zip code doesn’t determine your destiny,” to address the city’s violence and to “break this city’s endless cycle of corruption” that allows politicians to profit from their office.

Lightfoot emerged as the surprising leader in the first round of voting in February when 14 candidates were on the ballot to succeed Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who decided against running for a third term.

She seized on outrage over a white police officer’s fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald to launch her reformer campaign. She got in the race even before Emanuel announced he wouldn’t seek re-election amid criticism for initially resisting calls to release video of the shooting.

Joyce Ross, 64, a resident of the city’s predominantly black West Side who is a certified nursing assistant, cast her ballot Tuesday for Lightfoot. Ross said she believes Lightfoot will be better able to clean up the police department and curb the city’s violence.

She was also bothered by Preckwinkle’s association with longtime Alderman Ed Burke, who was indicted earlier this year on charges he tried to shake down a restaurant owner who wanted to build in his ward.

“My momma always said birds of a feather flock together,” Ross said.

Preckwinkle said she called Lightfoot Tuesday night to congratulate her on a “hard-fought campaign.”

“While I may be disappointed I’m not disheartened. For one thing, this is clearly a historic night,” she told a crowd gathered in her South Side neighbourhood. “Not long ago two African American women vying for this position would have been unthinkable. And while it may be true that we took two very different paths to get here, tonight is about the path forward.”

That path will have major challenges. Chicago has been losing population, particularly in predominantly African American neighbourhoods hit hardest by violence and a lack of jobs.

The new mayor will take over a city that faces massive financial problems. She will have just a few months to prepare a new budget, which in 2020 is expected to have a roughly $250 million deficit. Lightfoot also will take over the worst-funded public pensions of any major U.S. city. Chicago’s annual payments to the retirement systems are slated to grow by $1.2 billion by 2023.

She has expressed support for a casino in Chicago and changing the state’s income tax system to a graduated tax, in which higher earners are taxed at a higher rate — two measures lawmakers have tried for unsuccessfully for years to pass.

Violence and policing will also continue to be an issue, and one that has proven to be politically difficult.

The Chicago Police Department must implement a federally monitored consent decree approved in January. It followed the McDonald killing and a U.S. Justice Department review that found a long history of excessive use of force and racial bias by officers.

While voters also elected several newcomers over City Council veterans, Lightfoot will have to work with a council that has a sizable number of members who are the type of politicians she railed against during her campaign.

Sara Burnett And Herbert G. McCann, The Associated Press

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter</s>America’s midwestern city of Chicago on Tuesday became the biggest US city to elect a black woman, Lori Lightfoot, its mayor, as voters put their faith in an openly-gay political novice to tackle difficult problems of economic inequality and gun violence.

Lightfoot, a 56-year-old former federal prosecutor and practicing lawyer who has never before held elected office, won the city’s mayoral race in a lopsided victory.

She beat Toni Preckwinkle, a career politician who is also black, by a wide margin of 74 to 26 percent with most ballots counted.

“We were up against powerful interests,” Lightfoot said in a victory speech, with her wife and young daughter by her side.

“Today, you did more than make history, you created a movement for change,” she told a cheering crowd.

Lightfoot will become Chicago’s first openly gay mayor as well as the first African America woman to hold the post. Since 1837, Chicago voters have elected only one black mayor and one female mayor.

Her ascendancy to the top of Chicago government was a stunning development in a city where insider deals and entrenched party politics held sway for decades.

“It is a city-wide rejection of the Chicago political establishment at the mayoral level,” Evan McKenzie, political science professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, told AFP.

Preckwinkle, the chief executive of Cook County in which Chicago is located, has for decades held various local elected offices, which analysts said hurt her in an election in which voters were looking to shake up city hall.

Among the top issues were high levels of gun violence that claims more lives than in other major American cities, and years of political corruption in the Democratic stronghold.

The initial field in the mayoral race consisted of 14 contenders, but Lightfoot managed an upset — sidelining moderates and establishment figures by promising to clean up city government and reduce economic inequality.

She and Preckwinkle were the final two left competing in Tuesday’s run-off election.

Voters left little doubt they wanted the next mayor to tackle the major issues vexing the city of 2.7 million people — including economic disparities and gun violence.

“The message is that (voters) want new ideas and cleaner government,” McKenzie said.

Community groups have for years complained about disparities in living conditions among the sprawling city’s diverse communities.

Gun violence, fueled by gangs and the drug trade, plagues economically-depressed neighborhoods in the South and West, which are majority African American.

The downtown business district, and areas to the north and along the city’s famed lake shore, have enjoyed an economic boom even as more than 550 people were murdered last year alone.

Reforming the police department, which has a sordid history of abusive tactics, and city hall, which is mired in a federal corruption probe of one of its members, were priorities for voters, McKenzie said.

Lightfoot headed a panel investigating the city’s policing problems and held a number of appointed positions in city government.

She has promised to increase affordable housing, fight homelessness and crime, and boost oversight of the police department.

“We can and will finally put the interests of our people, all of our people, ahead of the interests of a powerful few,” Lightfoot said Tuesday night.

Lightfoot will replace outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel — once a rising star in the Democratic Party and former president Barack Obama’s first White House chief of staff.

The powerful Emanuel sustained political damage for his handling of murder of black teenager Laquan McDonald and declined to run for a third term.</s>Lori Lightfoot, a political newcomer, was elected the first black female mayor of Chicago on Tuesday, defeating opponent Toni Preckwinkle by a landslide in a runoff to take over a city struggling with crime and weak finances.

A former federal prosecutor, Lightfoot won 74 percent of the vote with nearly all precincts counted compared with 26 percent for Preckwinkle, a long-time local politician, to become Chicago’s 56th mayor.

WATCH: March 26 – Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel lays into Jussie Smollett: How dare you?

Lightfoot, 56, who will also become the first openly gay mayor of the third-largest U.S. city, appealed to voters who are tired of politics as usual. She has never held political office, while Preckwinkle, 72, was a city councilwoman for almost 20 years before becoming Cook County board president in 2010.

“You did more than make history. You created a movement for change,” Lightfoot told hundreds of supporters at her election night party, promising to end corruption and make the city’s streets safe again. “We can and will remake Chicago.”

The runoff between two African-American women was a rarity in the United States, where only 6 percent of mayors in the 200 largest U.S. cities are women of color, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign.

READ MORE: Violent weekend in Chicago as shootings leave at least 11 dead, 70 wounded

Lightfoot and Preckwinkle, both Democrats, earned spots on the ballot in the runoff after they garnered the most votes among 14 candidates in a February election. Lightfoot will replace Rahm Emanuel, who did not seek a third term.

“She brings fresh air and is someone I can trust,” Shisha Amabel, a 72-year-old retired social worker who joined supporters at Lightfoot‘s celebration at a Michigan Avenue hotel.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker alluded to former U.S. President Barack Obama, once an Illinois senator, in offering his congratulations.

“In a city that serves as the hometown for many Black American politicians who have made history, there is another political first,” Booker said on Twitter.

Lightfoot, the former president of independent civilian body the Chicago Police Board, will inherit massive fiscal challenges including a $28 billion unfunded liability for the city’s four retirement systems and escalating annual pension contributions that will top $2 billion in 2023.

A projected $252 million budget deficit for fiscal 2020, which begins Jan. 1, awaits the new mayor, along with expired or expiring labor contracts with police, firefighter and public school teacher unions.

Neither candidate disclosed detailed plans to shore up the city’s sagging finances.

In debates, Lightfoot, a former corporate lawyer, said the city has to demonstrate it can be a “better fiscal steward” before it seeks more revenue.

Lightfoot will take over a city ranked as one of the nation’s most violent. Homicides in Chicago declined by more than a quarter in 2018 from its five-year high of 769 in 2016. But less than one out of five murders were solved in Chicago in the first half of 2018, according to local media.

She will be expected to deliver on a campaign promise to reform the police department currently under court-appointed oversight to address a 2017 Justice Department finding of widespread excessive force and racial bias by officers.

On day one, Lightfoot will also have to find a way to ease tension between the police department and state’s attorney after prosecutors decided to drop charges against actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a hate crime attack.

“Not long ago, two African-American women vying for this position would have been unthinkable,” she said. “While it may be true that we took different paths to get here, tonight is about the path forward.”</s>Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot wins Chicago runoff, will be city's 1st black female mayor

CHICAGO (AP) — Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot wins Chicago runoff, will be city's 1st black female mayor.</s>In a historic first, a gay African American woman was elected mayor of America's third largest city Tuesday, as Chicago voters entrusted a political novice with tackling difficult problems of economic inequality and gun violence.

Lori Lightfoot, a 56-year-old former federal prosecutor and practicing lawyer who has never before held elected office, was elected the midwestern city's mayor in a lopsided victory.

She beat Toni Preckwinkle, who is also an African American woman, by a wide margin of 74 to 26 percent in early voting results with most ballots counted.

Lightfoot will become Chicago's first openly gay mayor and the first African American woman to hold the post. Since 1837, Chicago voters have elected only one black mayor and one female mayor.

Preckwinkle is the chief executive of Cook County where Chicago is based, which analysts said worked against her during a change election as voters sought to shake up city hall.

"People [are] hoping for something different to come along. To be the vessel for that is overwhelming," Lightfoot told reporters earlier after the polls opened.

Voters had left little doubt they want the next mayor to tackle major issues facing the city of 2.7 million people - especially economic disparities and gun violence that claims more lives than in other major American cities.</s>Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot defeated Toni Preckwinkle in a runoff for Chicago mayor Tuesday. She will be the first openly gay person and first black woman to lead the city.

The Associated Press called the race for Lightfoot shortly before 8 p.m. local time.

With over 70 percent of precincts in, Lightfoot led Preckwinkle 74.2 percent to 25.8 percent, according to the Chicago Board of Elections website.

Lightfoot, 56, who was an assistant U.S. attorney before she entered private practice, has never held elective office before.

The runoff election was bound to be historic, as either of the two candidates was going to be Chicago’s first black female mayor. The city is around 33 percent black, according to 2010 Census data.

Lightfoot came in first in the February election that saw a record high of 14 candidates vying to succeed Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who did not run for re-election.

Preckwinkle, 72, a former schoolteacher who served on the Chicago City Council for 19 years before becoming Cook County Board president in 2011, came in second in the February race, garnering 16.1 percent of the vote to Lightfoot's 17.5 percent.

They both beat William "Bill" Daley of the famous political family, whose father and brother each served as mayor for a combined total of more than 40 years.

Daley, who came in third with 14.8 percent of the vote, conceded that night and congratulated both women, saying "one of them will have the honor of being the next mayor of Chicago."

Emanuel, who has been mayor since 2011, announced in September that he would not seek a third term.

Although a nonpartisan election, the candidates in the February election like Tuesday's runoff were all attached in varying degrees to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has virtually disappeared from the city.

Lightfoot seized on the outrage over the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald by a white police officer to launch her reformer campaign and suggested that Preckwinkle was attached to big-party politics.

Lightfoot said that as mayor, she would focus on investing in neighborhoods on the West and South Sides and bring transparency and accountability to City Hall. She also said she also wants to end City Hall corruption and restore people's faith in government.

Preckwinkle, who leads Cook County’s Democratic Party, said that mayor “is not an entry-level job” and that “it's easy to talk about change. It's hard to actually do it.”

Both women expressed support for a casino in downtown Chicago, and for changing the state's income tax system to a graduated tax, in which higher earners are taxed at a higher rate.

There were few Election Day problems, NBC Chicago reported. One precinct opened "exceptionally late" because of a delay caused by judges not showing up on time, but the board of elections said that it appeared all voters would be able to return by the close of polls, according to the station.

Lightfoot was endorsed by the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune newspapers, as well as U.S. Reps. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Robin Kelly, according to NBC Chicago.

Preckwinkle had the endorsement of several unions, including the Service Employees International Union state council, the Teamsters joint council and the Local 700 and other unions, as well as U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Bobby Rush and Danny Davis, NBC Chicago reported. Chance the Rapper also endorsed her.</s>Political newcomer Lori Lightfoot has been elected Chicago mayor, becoming the first black female — and openly gay — leader of the city.

Lightfoot on Tuesday defeated Toni Preckwinkle, a former school teacher who served in the City Council for 19 years before becoming Cook County Board president in 2011.

The 56-year-old Lightfoot is a former federal prosecutor who campaigned on ridding Chicago’s government of corruption. She also said she wanted to help low-income and working-class people she believes have been “left behind and ignored” by Chicago’s political ruling class.

Lightfoot and Preckwinkle were the top two vote-getters in the February general election that saw 14 vie to succeed Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He decided against running for a third term.

Lightfoot will be sworn in May 20.</s>CHICAGO — Chicago became the largest U.S. city ever to elect a black woman as its mayor as voters on Tuesday chose Lori Lightfoot, a former prosecutor, to replace Rahm Emanuel. When she takes office in May, Lightfoot also will be the city’s first openly gay mayor.

Lightfoot, who has never held elective office, easily won the race, The Associated Press reported, beating out a better-known, longtime politician and turning her outsider status into an asset in a city with a history of corruption and insider dealings. Lightfoot, 56, beat Toni Preckwinkle, a former alderman who is president of the Cook County Board and who had long been viewed as a highly formidable candidate for mayor.

For Chicago, Lightfoot’s win signaled a notable shift in the mood of voters and a rejection of an entrenched political culture that has more often rewarded insiders and dismissed unknowns. For many voters, the notion that someone with no political ties might become mayor of Chicago seemed an eye-opening counterpoint to a decades-old, often-repeated mantra about this city’s political order: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.”

Lightfoot’s rise was unexpected only weeks ago, when 13 other candidates were vying to run the nation’s third-largest city, many of them far better known — with decades of experience in Chicago politics and with dynastic names like Daley. Lightfoot is a lawyer who has served in appointed positions, including as head of the Chicago Police Board and as a leader of a task force that issued a scathing report on relations between the Chicago police and black residents, but she was not widely known around the city until recent months.

The new mayor — Chicago’s 56th — arrives at a pivotal moment for a Democratic city that has for the past eight years been led by Emanuel, who surprised many residents when he chose not to seek re-election.

Chicago, a city of 2.7 million residents, is wrestling with dueling realities: Tech jobs and convention business have poured into its shimmering downtown while public schools have been shuttered on the South and West sides and thousands of black residents have moved away. Emanuel’s administration made strides to shore up the city’s fiscal woes, but residents have complained about mounting taxes and fees. Chicago’s new mayor still must come up with an additional $1 billion in the next four years to continue pulling the city out of a pension crisis.

And the city says its crime problems have been improving over the past two years, recording about half as many murders this year as it did during the same period in 2016. Still, gun and gang violence are pervasive and the city had more than 550 homicides in 2018, more than in the nation’s two larger cities, New York and Los Angeles.

Race has often played an outsize role in politics in Chicago, a city that is essentially evenly split between white, black and Latino residents. On Tuesday, though, the contest between two African American women scrambled the usual political calculus, or what one Chicagoan, Ra Joy, described as its habit of “tribal voting,” in which politicians could count on support from voters of their own race.

In February, during the most crowded mayoral primary in city history, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle topped a far larger array of candidates of various ethnicities, races and genders, removing all the others from Tuesday’s runoff. That left political alignments few Chicagoans had seen before: Lightfoot pursuing white voters on the city’s Northwest and Southwest sides; both women seeking black voters from a base on the South Side that had leaned toward a different black candidate in February; parts of Chicago’s North Side lakefront loaded with signs for Lightfoot.(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)Some residents said the history-making nature of the election — regardless of the winner — was energizing. But others seemed nonchalant, perhaps partly because Chicago has already seen such milestones. In 1983, the city picked its first black mayor, Harold Washington, in a racially charged election; a term before that, in 1979, the city chose its first female mayor, Jane Byrne.

“It’s not as shocking as it was back then, so that’s wonderful progress,” Kathy Byrne, the daughter of Jane Byrne, who died in 2014, said of the historic nature of this year’s election. “Why it’s taken so long? I don’t know.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)In many ways, the election transformed into a referendum on Chicago’s political culture, known for its miserable ranking on most measures of corruption, its political machine and its habit of keeping family dynasties in power.

Lightfoot, who was partner at a prominent law firm, Mayer Brown, portrayed her status as a political newcomer as a sign of strength, pledging to dismantle City Hall’s old political ways and to “bring in the light.”

Preckwinkle, the longtime Cook County board president, had tried to cast her experience as essential for managing a city the size of Chicago, while simultaneously reminding voters that she had — when she was first elected as an alderman years ago — regularly bucked the political establishment.(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)But as the election season played out, impatience over political corruption seemed to intensify among voters, in part because a major corruption scandal was unfolding at City Hall. Federal authorities have accused the City Council’s longest-serving alderman, Ed Burke, of running an old-school shakedown, even as the local news media reported that a second alderman had cooperated with the authorities, secretly recording his conversations at City Hall for months.

Of the city’s 50 aldermen, 15 seats were up for runoff elections Tuesday, but Burke, who has denied any wrongdoing, won re-election to another term in February, winning a margin large enough to avoid a runoff.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)In recent weeks, the campaign for mayor had grown intense, boiling over with angry exchanges during debates and back-and-forths over ads and endorsements. In truth, though, the two candidates appeared to have relatively few major policy differences.

Both Lightfoot and Preckwinkle portrayed themselves as progressives. Both talked about bringing more equity to Chicago, ensuring that top-level education, affordable housing and investment ought to be spread more fairly across a long-divided city, not limited to white neighborhoods or to wealthy neighborhoods on the city’s North Side.

In nearly a year of campaigning for mayor, Lightfoot has promised that she would usher in a new era of accountability and transparency to City Hall. At times, she seemed to be running against Chicago politics in the public imagination: A television ad used an image of a smoke-filled room and spoke darkly of the “Chicago machine” that she said her opponents, including Preckwinkle, were connected to.

Still, her claim of outsider status was questioned by some younger activists in the city, who pointed to her jobs in the Richard M. Daley administration and as a police oversight official during Emanuel’s tenure.

A Lightfoot mayoralty would be different, she vowed. Lightfoot spoke frequently of equity and inclusion, of redistributing city funds to spread the prosperity of downtown and the North Side to neighborhoods that have been neglected.

“It’s unacceptable, the condition of our communities on the South and West sides,” she said during one candidate forum. “The only way we are going to carve a new path for the city, to take us in a direction that our communities don’t continue to be resource-starved, is to vote for change.”

As mayor, Lightfoot would take power away from her own office by favoring an elected school board (currently, the mayor of Chicago appoints members of the school board).

She has vowed to enact significant change to the Chicago Police Department, increasing training and reducing officer misconduct.

But her answers to the urgent question of how the city will pay its staggering bills have not been comprehensive.

She has said that she will help the city meet its financial commitments by legalizing recreational marijuana and building a casino in Chicago. But she has not explained fully how she would solve the city’s imminent pension crisis.

“Whoever is elected as mayor is going to face a very difficult financial situation,” said Laurence Msall, the president of the Civic Federation, a watchdog group.(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)For Abraham Lacy, 33, a Chicagoan who was voting on the South Side on Tuesday, the city was facing urgent challenges with finances, schools and crime — challenges that may need someone with deep experience.

“At this point in time, you need someone in there that’s going to really do the job,” Lacy said after casting his ballot for Preckwinkle at an elementary school. He added: “It’s tough to have someone new come in when you have this many things going on.”

In the end, though, many voters said they were driven more by their perceptions about politics than about policy. Lightfoot, her supporters said, offered the promise of a new order and a rejection of the politics of a generation ago.

“It’s because of Chicago,” Deepti Pareenja, 37, said, after casting her ballot on the city’s Northwest Side for Lightfoot, in part because of the candidate’s status as a political outsider. “We have a history of corruption with people who’ve been ingrained in politics for multiple decades.”
Chicago elects its first black female and first openly gay mayor, Lori Lightfoot.