No one could have predicted when Lori Lightfoot announced her plans to run for mayor in May 2018 she would emerge as a front-runner on election night. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle? Probably. William Bill Daley? Likely. Susana Mendoza? Maybe. Willie Wilson? Possibly.
Instead, the corruption-busting, anti-machine candidate who got on television late, who ran a shoestring campaign, who got in front of as many voters as possible the outsider who ran against the Chicago political establishment beat it on Tuesday. Now she faces Preckwinkle, the runner-up, in the April 2 runoff election. Lightfoot won with 17.5 percent of the vote to Preckwinkles 16.1 percent. Which candidate will shore up the rest of Chicago?
Lightfoot didnt have heavy union backing. She didnt have corporate support. She didnt follow a rose garden strategy. She didnt have high-priced consultants or media production teams or experienced campaign staffers.
Yet she bubbled to the top. She surged. Chicago voters across the city searched until they found her name on that long list of candidates on the ballot she was listed No. 12 out of 14 and propelled her into a showdown with Preckwinkle. Two black women. Two progressives. Two powerful voices. A historic matchup.
Preckwinkle brings her own moxie to the rumble. She has executive experience managing thousands of employees, overseeing a budget, negotiating labor agreements and, as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, flexing political muscle. She heads into the runoff with two important labor endorsements, from the Chicago Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union, organizations with formidable ground games.
Lightfoot will have to step up hers. When she kicked off her campaign, she expected to face Mayor Rahm Emanuel. She framed Emanuels leadership style as us vs. them. Divisive. Off-putting. Aloof. Its why she got into the race in the first place. Then Emanuel decided not to run. Another twist that made this race unpredictable.
LIGHTFOOT is a former federal prosecutor, later assigned to investigate Chicago police misconduct cases and oversee a task force to overhaul the Chicago Police Department. She gave voters a clean option. She suffered no taint from connections to Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, who faces a federal criminal charge of attempted extortion. That scandal continues to plague Preckwinkle; it dragged on the campaigns of Mendoza and Gery Chico and others who have ties to Burke.
If Lightfoot cracked the machine Tuesday, so did Chicago voters at least with their choice of the top vote-getting semifinalist in the race for mayor.
But Lightfoot and Preckwinkle now have to court a wider base of Chicagoans in order to succeed in April.
What will Lightfoot and Preckwinkle do to win those hearts and minds? The overture starts now.
The Chicago Tribune
