The incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is the first to acknowledge that her reelection campaign won’t be easy. In an interview with NBC News, Lightfoot stated, “There are nine persons on the ballot.” “There will always be a runoff,” but it’s starting to look more and more likely that Lightfoot won’t even get that far.
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If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in Chicago’s municipal election, the top two vote-getters compete against one another in a second round of voting in April.
The fiery Democratic first-term mayor, who quickly created a nationwide hate-hate relationship with conservatives, is now facing real challenges from at least three opponents in the nine-person contest with less than two weeks until the Feb. 28 election. Chicagoans frustrated with gun violence have driven up her unfavorable ratings. She hasn’t managed to enter the top two in the most recent polls.
All of this adds up to the startling possibility that a big-city mayor in office may be disqualified from running for reelection in the first round of voting.
In an interview, Rep. Jess “Chuy” Garcia, one of her rivals, stated, “It’s looking tougher and harder for her.” “From her vantage point, it’s a heck of a front to be fighting on.”
According to a recent poll, Lightfoot is statistically tied with two other candidates: Garcia, who has a strong name recognition and who in 2015 forced then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff, and Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools who has the support of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police. Garcia was unsuccessful, although he later won a seat in Congress.
Lightfoot remarked, “I love people thinking of me as the underdog. “I’ve always been the underdog. And I’ve always shown them they were mistaken, so I’m fine there.
As of right now, Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner who has the support of the politically potent Chicago Teachers Union, which has long been at war with Lightfoot, is the target of Lightfoot’s attack. Johnson is a candidate who is showing signs of growing in popularity.
Lightfoot targeted Johnson during a candidate forum last week because he hasn’t been leading in the polls like Garcia and Vallas have. It appeared to be an admission that she was up against a contender who was gaining ground and might prevent her from moving on to the next round.
The attacks by Lightfoot were interpreted by Johnson as a show of desperation. With the Chicago Teachers Union’s backing, Johnson has a powerful local organization that can canvass neighborhoods on his behalf. She is aware that our movement is growing and that more and more individuals are taking our message to heart.
Lightfoot’s term as mayor has been turbulent; she is the first Black woman and the first out homosexual mayor of the city. She participated in heated discussions with both Governor J.B. Pritzker and her fellow alderman as well as the Chicago Teachers Union, which went on strike while she was in office.
After the mayor declared she would only offer interviews to journalists of color to honor her halfway point in office, a media outlet sued her in 2021. (At the time, the mayor said that she was seeking to call attention to a predominately white and male Chicago press corps.)
Most recently, her re-election campaign was the subject of an investigation after it attempted to enlist public school kids as volunteers in exchange for academic credit.
She has received praise for handling the Covid epidemic “much better than most mayors,” according to a recent editorial in the Chicago Tribune. The editorial praised her for enhancing Chicago’s financial standing as well. The editorial claimed that Lightfoot had prioritized equity in her mission and had put unrelenting effort into enhancing the neighborhoods’ economic prospects.
Lightfoot comments that she has already been written off. She received such little support during her first campaign for mayor that she occasionally missed the debate round. Recently, Garcia and Vallas have also made mistakes. Garcia was questioned about donations from Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, and Vallas’ backing from the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police has followed him everywhere. This is especially true given the recent announcement that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be addressing the union on Monday.
Given everything Lightfoot is dealing with right now, the inevitable problem of crime is what threatens her chances of being re-elected as Chicago mayor.
After mass shootings, the Second City is immediately brought up in national debates about gun control that are shown on cable news. Municipal leaders have resisted the idea that gun regulations do nothing to deter crime for years. Notwithstanding local limits, they claim that firearms continue to flow across the border from places like Indiana and even from as far away as Mississippi, where they are illegally obtained by young people in and out of gangs. Chicago remains one of the most violent large cities in America, despite efforts by federal and local law enforcement to increase fines and prosecute more aggressive cases. This is true even if violence in 2022 slightly decreased from the previous year.
The hurt and rage caused by persistent crime are evident locally. An armed robbery, a break-in, a theft, and reports of shootings closer to their homes — the “secure neighborhoods” — on Chicago’s North Side were just a few of the local crimes that were discussed at one of the mayor’s recent events.
Lightfoot addressed the gathering in an effort to deflect questions about neighborhood safety by saying, “I know for many of you, you’re feeling a touch of violence, maybe for the first first time in your lives in Chicago.”
As she fought to sue out-of-state gun stores, Lightfoot focused her remarks on the flow of firearms entering the city.
We forewarned them, we provided the information, and they still persisted. Thus, this senior litigator? Inferring to her prior work as a federal prosecutor, she stated. We strapped it on and filed a lawsuit against these f—-ers, excuse my profanity.
On a Saturday in late January, a group of roughly 50 people was awakened by that line. But, Lightfoot’s renowned strong talk didn’t do much to soothe their worries.
One Chicagoan on the North Side who listened to the mayor’s words but preferred not to have his name used remarked, “I feel terrible.” “I still don’t believe she understands,”
Greg O’Neil, a Chicagoan who assisted in organizing the event at Moe’s Cantina on the city’s North Side but hadn’t made up his mind on a candidate for mayor, said the most common worry he has heard is about a recent rise in neighborhood crime and an overall feeling of unease among friends and neighbors. These worries were voiced by some of the people there.
“People feel that 20 grand isn’t getting your money’s worth when you’re paying $20,000 in property taxes and there’s an armed robbery at 1 o’clock in the afternoon in your area,” remarked one.
Another person remarked, “It’s expanding into the wealthy communities, and we’ve become a target.”
“From my perspective, streetwise people are utterly terrified. And they’re on the move,” added a third.
63% of Chicago residents said they didn’t feel safe in a recent poll.
Eddie Pulliam was one of them; he came from the city’s South Side to hear Lightfoot that afternoon and talked about how his neighborhood had gotten worse over time.
Pulliam added, “I just wish she would put more of an emphasis on looking at what’s occurring in established neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. “I’m quite upset about the crime in Chicago. I find it frustrating that since crime started happening on the North Side, it has become a major issue.
Lightfoot claimed in an interview that Chicago’s persistent crime differs from that of other cities. She stated that the generational poverty and broken gangs in some areas of Chicago are combined, and the ongoing influx of illegal guns further makes matters worse.
The proliferation of illegal firearms, according to her, is the city’s worst problem and greatest existential threat. She then attacked Vallas, her rival, claiming that he is oversimplifying the situation by asserting that adding more police officers will resolve it.
Like all of Lightfoot’s rivals, Vallas, a former budget director for the city of Chicago, centered his campaigns on the problem of violence.
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