Lori Lightfoot came out of nowhere to win the 2019 Chicago mayor’s race. Can a lesser-known challenger do the same this time?
CHICAGO — At this time in Chicago’s 2019 election cycle, nobody gave Lori Lightfoot a chance to win her long-shot bid for mayor.
Her name recognition couldn’t compare with Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, or with Bill Daley, the son and brother of former mayors, or with Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza.
Unlike business owner Willie Wilson, who had a proven ability to attract Black votes, Lightfoot didn’t have a clear base of support.
She wasn’t even able to generate the level of attention public policy consultant Amara Enyia drew when she unveiled big money donations and endorsements from Kanye West and Chance the Rapper.
In late January 2019, a Chicago Sun-Times poll showed Preckwinkle and Daley led with around 12% of the vote respectively, with Wilson, Mendoza and City Hall veteran Gery Chico behind them, all virtually tied around 9%. Lightfoot was polling at just under 3%.
Lightfoot’s mayoral ambitions appeared so dim at one point that Fox 32 didn’t invite her on the main stage for a candidates’ debate, a slight the mayor still occasionally complains about by saying they sat her at the “kids’ table.”
But Lightfoot, who carried her credibility.
