Lightfoot defeats Preckwinkle to become Chicago mayor

History was made on Tuesday with the election of Chicago’s first black female mayor, Lori Lightfoot, and an openly gay executive, in what was a landslide victory - 74 percent of the vote against Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who is also head of the local Democratic Party --- a move that some, but not many, saw coming; bringing a mandate for change from the long-held corruption, and smoke filled rooms that ruled the nation’s third largest city for decades.

Notably, like an older dynastic family she carried all 50 wards, and as erstwhile political columnist Greg Hinz noted, “. . . , she can glory in her victory, which apparently included carrying all 50 wards and is the biggest since Richard M. Daley got 78.46 percent in February 2003.”

Lightfoot’s candidacy came on the heels of scandal, after scandal among bribe taking aldermen, failed and jailed public school heads, and a dizzying array of disgrace, that seemed to be part and parcel of what city government was, and might always be.

That path began to take a nosedive with the federal charges against longtime, and uber powerful, alderman, Edmund Burke who faced a criminal complaint by the feds for attempted extortion, served as a valve that flushed out politicians like Preckwinkle who initially denied any association with Burke and said that she was only a friend of his wife Anne, until the Chicago Tribune revealed that she was the beneficiary, not only of a private fundraiser at his home, but also the intended beneficiary of a Burger King shake down creating a whopper of a public relations mess that the voters remembered;, especially when it was later revealed that Preckwinkle was the intended beneficiary.

Her reputation was further shattered after Chicago Tribune investigations revealed that she hired Burke's son, for a county job, for security duties, associated with Homeland Security, having worked for Sheriff Tom Dart, and was “under internal investigation for allegedly making inappropriate sexual comments at the sheriff’s office when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s administration hired him to a nearly $100,000 per year job, newly released records show,” reported the Tribune.

Lightfoot, on the other hand was the first, and only candidate who publicly condemned him, and the further tattered reputation of the city, who told the  Chicago Tribune, ““It seems all these other folks are running for cover and don’t want to talk about him, but frankly, that underscores the fact that we’ve got different factions of the political machine manifested in Mendoza, Preckwinkle, Daley and Chico and others who don’t want to rock the boat because they are very much wedded to the status quo,” said former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot, one of the few mayoral candidates eager to discuss Burke. “It’s telling that they aren’t willing to step up and say, ‘Look, this guy has been in office way too long, he’s been allowed to amass way too much power.’ ”

Such refreshing honesty had voters sit up and blink, and vote her into office, and remove a slew of other aldermen who had also been “in office way too long” has now with the election of other younger, more progressive, even far-to-the left, aldermen will recreate the city council and move that body into a more cohesive hole but one without old school pols like Pat O’Connor, Joe Moore and Deb Mell, all tied to longtime political, and in the case of Mell, near dynastic ties.

“Mell, 50, is the daughter of powerful former 33rd Ward Democratic committeeman and Ald. Dick Mell. Dick Mell, who was first elected in 1975, famously jumped up on a desk during the tumultuous 1987 City Council meeting to decide a successor to the late Mayor Harold Washington,” said the Chicago Sun-Times.

Lightfoot’s election also shows the erosion of the power of the Irish-American Catholic ascendancy that has ruled Chicago, where once under Richard J. Daley, being Roman Catholic, even if black, might get one a patronage job, a hallmark of the Chicago machine.

In her victory speech, Lightfoot said,  "Thank you, Chicago. From the bottom of my heart, thank you,” where she also noted the contributions of Immigrants and those “who love differently.”

"In this election, Toni and I were competitors, but our differences were nothing compared to what we can achieve together. Now that it's over, I know we'll work together for the city we both love," she said. "Today, you did more than make history. You created a movement for change."

In a previous comments on local public radio, there was this statement from Lightfoot, that galvanized many, where she noted that Chicago needed to  "break from the status quo that has failed us" and deliver "equity, inclusion and fairness."

“The only way we are going to carve a new path for the city ... is to vote for change.”

"It's unacceptable, the condition of our communities on the South and West sides," she said during a candidate forum last week on WBEZ-Chicago Public Media, referring to predominantly black and disadvantaged areas of the city of 2.7 million people. "The only way we are going to carve a new path for the city, to take us in a direction that our communities don't continue to be resource starved, is to vote for change."

Part of the change is to stem the tides of financial holes in the city budget created from some of her predecessors, and mentors, that led to a pension deficit for the city’s first responders, firefighter and police, and ill-advised parking meter scheme that funneled much needed dollars and jobs to New York bankers.

The school system, is struggling under the weight of a less than fully implemented statewide plan to fund its mostly black and brown student population, with a deteriorating physical plant, and great distrust between the police and black communities that culminated in the 2015 shooting of an unarmed black teenager Laquan McDonald.

The new mayor will also have to counter those that want to water down her victory by saying, “well, the voter turnout was so low,” or those that who with open hostility questioned her fitness for office by denigrating her as a “corporate lawyer” (no sin, in and of itself) or belittled her attempts at the police board to bring evidence based practice to her role, or those, like Preckwinkle who blithely dismissed her, and that she saw the mayor’s office as an entry level job.

In her concession speech, she was less than gracious and talked about her record, barely mentioning her defeat, and instead urged her supporters to “keep on fighting.”

At just over 5 feet tall, Lightfoot is not one to mince words, or wary of using profanity, but then it’s been said, that a woman who can cuss with conviction, earns respect, and in a report from Crain’s Chicago Business, there was this assessment: "I don't think she will buckle under political pressure," says Eric Sussman, who served with Lightfoot as a federal prosecutor. Around 2000, he says, she was summing up the prosecution's argument in a bank-robbery trial when the defendant stood up and began yelling. "She dropped her legal pad and went toe-to-toe with this guy who must have been twice her size. Both of them had to be restrained."

Noting her full plate, the Sun-Times, headlined tartly, on Tuesday, and needlessly, to “get to work” after a lukewarm congratulations, setting up a possible racial angle, for her coverage, reminiscent of one of the more infamous Chicago Reader covers, that urged Barack Obama, “Don’t Screw This Up,” both reminding that Chicago, like the nation, maintains a separate but unequal status, even among highly qualified and lawfully elected lawmakers.