Lori Lightfoot’s legacy: A combative mayor who led Chicago through crises, some of her own making
CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot exits office Monday after presiding over the city’s most tumultuous era in generations, one marked by enormous strain on every element of civic life and the twin crises of COVID-19 and civil unrest.
As Chicago’s first Black female and first openly gay mayor, Lightfoot vowed four years ago to make Chicago the safest big city in the country, transform its reputation as a hive for corruption and villainy and lead an overhaul of the long-troubled Police Department.
Her ambitious plans were derailed by the pandemic and widespread looting following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd, as well as Lightfoot’s own failure to forge or maintain bonds with stakeholders and public officials who could help her push a reform agenda.
It was this confluence of outside forces and self-inflicted wounds that sealed Lightfoot’s fate as she became the city’s first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose reelection when she garnered only 17% of the vote in February’s election. Her fall from breakout political star to placing third represented a harsh rebuke from Chicago voters across the ideological spectrum.
Since her defeat, Lightfoot has stopped holding regular news conferences and declined to speak with the Tribune for this story. Instead, Lightfoot has given a small number of exit interviews to other media outlets where she defended her record and suggested history will look kindly upon her long-term measures aimed at making Chicago a fairer city.
“When we work to achieve equity, what we really mean is we are looking at our history and the deep scars that systemic racism, machine politics and disinvestment has left,” Lightfoot said in a farewell address last week. The solutions, she said, “won’t come overnight. But our administration created real change and planted seeds for transformation of our city to right these historic wrongs.”
Indeed, where Lightfoot experienced most success was in highlighting Chicago’s inequities and advocating to reverse deeply entrenched segregation, poverty and institutional racism. While she and her administration exaggerated the scope of her Invest South/West program to boost development in Black and Latino neighborhoods, she brought dozens of projects and refocused builders to disinvested communities. She took key steps toward realizing the proposed Red Line extension beyond 95th Street, a move officials hope will boost the Far South Side.
Lightfoot also made moves to stabilize the city’s finances by securing a Chicago casino to help fund pensions, addressing costly legacy debts, and reducing some fines and fees owed by those least able to afford it.
Early in the pandemic, when Black Chicagoans were dying at six times the rate of whites, Lightfoot and her team led by Dr. Allison Arwady worked to address that startling disparity. They provided door-to-door outreach with masks and information in vulnerable communities and, when vaccines became available, prioritized them for South and West side residents.
But Lightfoot also was slow to take action when the pandemic spurred Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to close schools and businesses across the state, following along only reluctantly. She later clashed with the governor over bar and restaurant rules and battled the Chicago Teachers Union in a push to return to in-person learning, even as she faced blowback over keeping the lakefront closed too long. Her supporters praised her effort to make Chicago the largest open city in America, but critics accused her of acting too hastily to loosen restrictions.
Perhaps most devastating to her reelection bid, 2020 ushered in a staggering spike in violence that has yet to fully abate.
Though the recent crime wave was one felt across American cities, the outgoing mayor was dogged by accusations that her response was inadequate and her hand-picked police superintendent, David Brown, out of his league. Officers complained she didn’t have their back, a grievance highlighted
