Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot loses re-election bid as city battles crime epidemic

She won’t be doing any dancing tonight.

Chicago Democrat Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday became the Windy City’s first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose re-election as rising crime in the city steered voters away from the embattled leader. 

Receiving only 16.4% of the vote, Lightfoot, 60, finished behind former head of Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson in Tuesday’s race. 

Vallas, who took 35% of the vote, and Johnson, who obtained 20.2% of the vote, will head to an April 4 runoff election to determine who will be the city’s next mayor. 

“I will be rooting and praying for our next mayor,” Lightfoot said in her concession speech.

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

Heading into Tuesday’s race, Lightfoot’s prospects appeared bleak, as she trailed multiple candidates in numerous polls, which showed that worries over crime and public safety in the city were the top concerns of voters in America’s third-largest city.

One recent poll noted that Vallas’ lead over Lightfoot had been expanding in the days leading up to Tuesday’s election.

Lightfoot has faced heavy criticism for rampant crime that has plagued Chicago during her tenure, as well as for injecting race into the election and saying that voters who don’t support her shouldn’t show up to the polls. 

Under Lightfoot, Chicago recorded 695 murders at the end of 2022 and 804 in 2021 – a level not seen in the Windy City in a quarter of a century.

In addition, the city saw more than 20,000 cases of theft in 2022, nearly double the amount of theft incidents in 2021, according to the Chicago Police Department’s end-of-year report. 

In the first three weeks of 2023, crime rates in the city have skyrocketed by 61%, compared to last year, according to Chicago police.

Lightfoot alleged that critics of her four-year tenure just don’t want to see “a black woman” in leadership in the New Yorker Saturday.

“I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” she told the outlet. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”

The mayor is the first black woman and first openly lesbian mayor of Chicago.

“The same forces that didn’t want Harold Washington to succeed, they’re still here,” she told the New Yorker, referring to the Democrat who was elected in 1983. “The last time we had an African American mayor in power was 40 years ago. It’s important for us not to repeat history.”

Lightfoot made the claim despite eight of the nine mayoral candidates in Tuesday’s race being people of color. 

Lightfoot told South Side Chicago voters earlier this month that they should not vote at all if they do not vote to re-elect her, but later insisted that she misspoke.

The mayor claimed that voting for “somebody not named Lightfoot is a vote for Chuy Garcia or Paul Vallas,” referring to her challengers. 

“If you want them controlling your fate and your destiny, then stay home,” Lightfoot continued. “Then don’t vote.”

She later told reporters she did not mean to suggest voters should sit out the election.

Vallas, the top vote-getter on Tuesday, was endorsed by Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police and on the campaign trail he decried the “utter breakdown of law and order” in the city under Lightfoot. 

Vallas, 69, called for adding hundreds of police officers to combat out of control crime in Chicago.

Lightfoot has criticized Vallas, the only white candidate in the field, as being too conservative for Chicago, accusing him of using “the ultimate dog whistle” by saying his campaign was about “taking back our city.”

Johnson, who will be Vallas’ opponent in April, received the coveted Chicago Teachers Union endorsement, and had support from several other progressive organizations, including United Working Families.

Lightfoot blasted Johnson during a debate earlier this month, repeatedly saying that his plan to combat crime would make Chicago less safe.

“If he’s not willing to commit to not defunding the police, he’s going to have less officers on the street, and our communities are going to be less safe,” Lightfoot said.

With Post wires