The Match-up Between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson in Chicago ‘1920-2020: A Challenge for the Pro-Police, Tough-on-crime Message’
“We have to be bold in looking at long entrenched problems, particularly on poverty and systemic inequality,” Ms. Lightfoot said. We need to break the barriers that prevent many of our residents from realizing their talent, and we need to fight those who are in the face of it.
After the verdict of the Rodney King trial, Ms. Bass was a community organizer, Mr. Adams was a demonstrator who was beaten by the police as a teenager.
As a congresswoman, Ms. Bass took a leading role in 2020 after George Floyd’s death on legislation that aimed to prevent excessive use of force by police and promoted new officer anti-bias training. The measure was approved by the House, but not by the Senate, and President Biden later approved some of the measures.
The daughter of a factory worker and a health care aide, she was the only one in her family to ever go to college, and eventually went on to attend law school and become president of the Chicago Police Board.
Ms. Lightfoot and Mr. Adams want to increase the police force in Chicago and New York. Criminal justice advocates have criticized them for not moving fast enough to reform the departments.
Ms. Lightfoot said that the police department has to be successful. “And to me, successful is defined by making sure that they’re the best trained police department, that they understand that the legitimacy in the eyes of the public is the most important tool that they have, and that we also support our officers — it’s a really hard and dangerous job.”
In 2019, Lightfoot was the surprise first-place finisher in another crowded mayoral primary with just 17.5% of the vote. She won the election because voters wanted change and they chose her over Preckwinkle.
The match-up between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will be done in five weeks.
Vallas highlighted in celebratory remarks his pro-police, tough-on-crime message after Lightfoot called him and Johnson to concede.
The big question over the next five weeks is if Vallas can win over enough people in a city where most of the votes for the presidential race went to the Democrats.
Johnson, in his speech Tuesday night, showed the first signs that he will seek to consolidate liberals who supported other candidates in the nine-person field. He said each candidate’s name.
Innocence in the Second City: The Running Electoral Trial of a Black M-Theory Prosecutor Rachel Lightfoot
Because no candidate is on course to top 50% in Tuesday’s election, the top two of the nine candidates on the ballot are moving on to the April 4 runoff.
The first Black woman and first lesbian to lead the city, the former prosecutor upended the political establishment with promises to clean up a city weary of corruption.
But years of contentious brawls over policing, teacher pay and Covid-19 public safety policies, as well as mounting complaints about long waits in Chicago’s public transit system, left Lightfoot vulnerable, raising the stunning prospect of the Second City ousting its incumbent mayor in the first round of voting.
Lightfoot found herself with few allies in her bid for a second term, and a host of powerful interests aligned against her. Vallas was endorsed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police. The Chicago Teachers Union backed Johnson. J.B. Pritzker did not participate in the race.
Chicago elections officials said more than 507,000 ballots had been cast by the time the polls closed. As more mail-in votes arrive, they will be added to the total.
The Mayor of Chicago in 2022: An Empirical Analysis on the Changing Face of the U.S. Police Department and the Chicago Police Department
The electorate focus on public safety was underscored by the outcome. The city had a spike in violence in 2020. And though shootings and murders have decreased since then, other crimes – including theft, car-jacking, robberies and burglaries – have increased since last year, according to the Chicago Police Department’s 2022 year-end report.
The dynamics in Chicago echoed mayor’s races in New York City in 2021, won by Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, and Los Angeles in 2022, where then-Rep. Karen Bass defeated Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer who had pumped more than $100 million into a campaign focused on law and order.
Johnson ate at Lightfoot’s support among progressives. He once advocated reducing police funding, but has backtracked from that message more recently, arguing that he meant he wants to increase funding for other priorities such as mental health treatment.
Editor’s Note: David Axelrod, a CNN senior political commentator and host of “The Axe Files,” was a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama and chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns. He worked as a reporter and media strategist for several successful mayoral campaigns in Chicago. His opinions are not reflected in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
“Obviously, we didn’t win the election today, but I stand here with my head held high and a heart full of gratitude,” Lightfoot told her supporters after the polls closed.
She Killed Mayor Lightfoot: How a Clenched-Fist, Go-It-All Leads to Consensus
She received decent marks for her handling of the public health crisis in her first year in office. But one element of that crisis – the scourge of rampant violence that spiked during the pandemic – contributed greatly to her repudiation at the polls on Tuesday.
But Lightfoot’s fall is a more complicated story that goes to a clenched-fist, go-it-alone style of leadership that made consensus hard to build and drove many who should have been her allies away.
Deeply suspicious of the motives of other politicians, she systematically alienated Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Democrat-led state legislature and the Cook County leadership, all of whom are fellow Democrats.
She lost important legislative battles, including a law that will allow the Chicago public schools to appoint a 21-member school board, larger than what she wanted, and the biggest school board in the country.
She was the one who ran on limiting the prerogatives of the City Council and then humiliated them in her inaugural speech, according to one of her once-allies. Police, fire, teachers, businesses and so on.
A sense of a city backsliding can be attributed to the departures of some high-profile businesses and the likely move of the Chicago Bears to the suburbs.
Johnson, who is Black, was relatively unknown to much of the city before being put forth by the Chicago Teacher’s Union, for whom he has worked as an organizer. Johnson was once a supporter of defunding police, but now he is one of the major candidates.
The mayor spent weeks of advertising and hammered a fourth candidate who she was afraid of the most, US Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garca, only to be narrowly missed by Johnson for a spot in the second round.
Vallas, the most conservative major candidate, says he will take on crime by hiring more police officers, while Johnson, the most liberal, has focused his crime message on addressing its root causes and at one point advocated reducing police funding.
The Chicago teachers union as a champion of the Chicago mayor’s race: a personal history of the problem of police reform in the wake of Covid-19
The city’s slow economic recovery from the pandemic is also connected to crime. McDonald’s president and chief executive officer Chris Kempczinski said at The Economic Club of Chicago last fall that the chain was struggling to convince potential employees to relocate to work in its West Loop headquarters.
He said that it shows up in many different ways. It affects us when crime is pervasive in the peoples’ minds. It is holding all of us back.
The race’s focus on crime and public safety showed how voters’ attitudes and the city’s concerns had shifted in the four years since Lightfoot had campaigned as a police reformer who would overhaul the way officers are supervised and disciplined.
However, the results of 2019’s first round – with the first-place finisher qualifying for the runoff with the support of less than one-in-five Chicago voters – proved to be an omen of Lightfoot’s future difficulties.
The Chicago Teachers Union went on strike after a fight with Lightfoot over pay and class size. The two were enemies last year as they fought over the return of teachers despite rising Covid-19 cases.
With the results of Tuesday’s election, the union president said that the city is ready to break with the past that ignores the needs of students and families.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/lori-lightfoot-chicago-mayor-race-crime/index.html
Two Cities: The Chicago Police Officers’ Battle in a Divided and Fraternal-Order-Forcing State of Emergency
Lightfoot infuriated police last year, in a fight focused on overtime pay in a department that had struggled to retain officers and recruit new ones, when she said officers had an “incredible” amount of time off. It was the latest ugly chapter in years-long tension between police and Lightfoot’s administration as she sought to rein in overtime spending.
Vallas, a former schools chief in Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Connecticut, was endorsed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police for his pro- police message.
His tough-on-crime pitch also attracted more conservative voters. Chicago is a diverse, overwhelmingly blue city, with 83% of the electorate backing the Democratic ticket in the 2020 presidential election. But in such a fractured field, any foothold of support is critical.
On Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown announced he will resign in March – which will allow the next mayor to install new leadership at the department.
Bass defeated Caruso in part by offering her own plans to increase the number of police officers on the streets and declare a state of emergency to address a crisis of homelessness.
Vallas and Johnson had the strongest parts of the city to the north and west, while Lightfoot had her best performance in the black areas to the south and west.
Those results underscore the extent to which the runoff is poised to become a battle for Black voters’ support – and one in which the contrasting visions of Vallas and Johnson over policing are likely to take center stage.
He said he would fight for public safety across the city, as well as “a city where the trains actually run on time and the public schools are fully resourced.”