Dear Lori Lightfoot: You Were a Terrible Mayor, Get Over Yourself

Ousted Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, as sure as the sun rises in the east, blames sexism and racism for her rejection at the polls yesterday. It’s so weird because when Lightfoot was elected in 2019, her opponent, Toni Preckwinkle, was also a black woman. Lightfoot won the two-way runoff that year with a whopping 74% of the vote.

Somebody must have swapped out the 2019 Chicago electorate and replaced them with all-new voters for 2023.

According to the Daily Mail, when a reporter asked after her concession if she had been treated unfairly because of her race and sex — “Objection, Your Honor — leading the witness!” [gavel bang] “SUSTAINED!” — Lightfoot said, “I’m a black woman in America. Of course.”

Lightfoot must have known what was coming on Tuesday because she laid down the race/woman card over the weekend. “I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” she told the New Yorker. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”

With all due respect, Madam Soon-To-Be-Former Mayor, do please shut up. You were a terrible mayor and that’s why 87% of Chicago voters at their first opportunity pulled the lever for someone, anyone else — including five black men (one of whom made the runoff) and one other black woman.

Chicago voters didn’t wake up one morning in 2020 and realize, “Oh, no — we elected a black woman? Why did no one tell us? We must resist her at all costs!”

No, Chicagoans saw a 52% increase in crime on Lightfoot’s watch, much of it violent.

In 2021, homicides in Chicago rose to their highest numbers in 25 years, outpacing other crime-ridden cities like New York City and Los Angeles.

Throughout her tenure, the mayor has been blasted for her poor relationship with law enforcement, as the city’s police department lost a significant number of officers in recent years amid the rise in crime.

Lightfoot’s COVID-19 lockdown policies were as capricious as they were thuggishly enforced, as my friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser noted in today’s Morning Briefing:

As 2020 bled into 2021, Lightfoot morphed into an odd combination of harsh enforcer of the rule of law that she made up, and an official who loathed law enforcement.

While Lightfoot focused on playing American Stasi with anyone who broke an arbitrary COVID rule, poorer parts of her city were under siege. She always seemed to be in denial about it, and that’s probably why even Democrats began to sour on her.

Worse is what Lightfoot’s lockdowns did to Chicago’s already struggling schools.

Lori Lightfoot caused this by playing COVID. pic.twitter.com/AYw23Vhdj8

— Wine&dine@69 (@ROBERTL45564711) February 20, 2023

Chicago politics is corrupt as hell but it’s understood that you aren’t supposed to be so blatantly obvious about stealing from children.

But maybe worst of all, according to National Review writer (and longtime Chicago resident) Jeffrey Blehar, “Lightfoot is by all accounts simply an unpleasant human being to deal with personally.” Her grating personality “doesn’t help around here,” Blehar noted, “in a gladhanding, palm-greasing town quite different in its cultural folkways from New York City or Los Angeles.”

When she wasn’t coming across as unpleasant or ineffectual, Lightfoot could be embarrassingly unserious.

If Lori Lightfoot doesn't make it to the runoff, she has a bright future playing "RONA DESTROYER" at kids' birthday parties. pic.twitter.com/PREGjCpu1x

— Morning Answer (@MorningAnswer) February 28, 2023