Mayor Lori Lightfoot Wasn’t Here to Make Friends—and That’s Her Loss

Looking back at Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s only term in office, it’s hard to see past my disappointment.

I’m not alone, as evidenced by her defeat in the first round of voting. Four years ago she came from relative obscurity to win all 50 of the city’s wards in her first political campaign ever.

This time, she couldn’t place high enough in the crowded field to make the runoff.

What went wrong? To borrow an overused motto from the world of reality TV, she wasn’t here to make friends.

She didn’t promise to make enemies, either, but she developed quite a number of new critics, including some former allies.

In 2020, for example, she made waves in a virtual meeting with members of the City Council Black Caucus by telling them that aldermen who don’t support her budget won’t have their wards prioritized, six aldermen who were in the meeting told Tribune reporters.

“Don’t come to me for s--- for the next three years” if you don’t support the budget, two aldermen recalled her saying. Although hints of retribution were nothing new for City Hall, the reporters noted, some aldermen were surprised that the mayor made such a threat so directly.

Indeed, one wonders, what happened to the days in City Hall when a mere nod-and-a-wink was supposed to be enough?

She defended a website she launched the previous year to shame aldermen who voted against her budget, which passed 39-11 anyway, defying criticism that the move was petty and bullying.

“The fact of the matter is, since when is letting voters and residents know how aldermen voted bullying?” Lightfoot told reporters. “That’s just silly.”

But she had more than enough problems outside City Hall without alienating potential allies inside.

Before she could get much of a handle on her promises to end corruption, take away aldermanic privilege and invest in all neighborhoods, not just the affluent ones, a pandemic happened.

So did civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer, as well as a spike in violent gun crime and carjackings that, despite some improvements, continues to plague the city today — a problem not limited to Chicago.

Lightfoot’s leadership in fighting the pandemic earned praise in its early days, but later ran into tussles with the police union over vaccine mandates and the Chicago Teachers Union over safety measures.

Still, the magnitude of her loss was striking, although less of a surprise for those of us who have felt rocked by the persistent crime surges, even in neighborhoods that were not known to have much reportable crime in the past.

In the city’s vast business community, several high-profile corporations moved their headquarters out of town, citing taxes and violence under Lightfoot’s watch.

Adding another sting to the city’s woes is the impending departure of the Bears (“Da Bears?”) from historic Soldier Field to a planned stadium in Arlington Heights.

Yet, despite the woes, Lightfoot did have some notable successes to brighten her legacy. She expresses the most pride in her INVEST South/West initiative to fund new infrastructure projects for heavily Black and Hispanic communities on the South and West sides — the most ambitious project since the riots following the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968.

Lightfoot also succeeded where two previous mayors failed in winning the city’s first casino, which Bally’s plans to build on the Near North Side, currently occupied by the Tribune.

Those commendable successes are worth lauding, even if her clashes — sometimes with her own allies and often played out in front of TV cameras — tend to stick longer in voters’ memories.

Unsurprisingly, Lightfoot’s negative coverage raises questions among many as to whether the city’s first Black, female and lesbian mayor is getting a fair assessment.

But having been around long enough to cover the racially incendiary campaign to elect Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor in 1983, I’m sure Lightfoot did not expect a cakewalk.

After all, the heated, profanity-laced rhetoric of Lightfoot’s predecessor Rahm Emanuel was widely covered, too, without the subject of ethnicity coming up.

When we speak of a legacy, we talk about the long-lasting impact of people and events that took place in the past. Despite her reputation for thin-skinned, petty and vindictive feuding, Lightfoot showed how to get some good things done — and how, with a bit more patience and prudence, she might have accomplished a lot more.

========

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)