Julie Bosman, Mitch Smith and Monica Davey

Whether the winner is Toni Preckwinkle, a former alderman who is president of the Cook County Board, or Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who has cast herself as an outsider in the city’s insular world of politics, Chicago will be led for the first time by an African American woman, making it the largest U.S. city ever to elect a black woman as its mayor.

The new mayor — Chicago’s 56th — arrives at a pivotal moment for a Democratic city that has for the past eight years been led by Rahm Emanuel, who surprised many residents when he chose not to seek re-election.

Chicago, a city of 2.7 million residents, is wrestling with dueling realities: Tech jobs and convention business have poured into its shimmering downtown while public schools have been shuttered on the South and West sides and thousands of black residents have moved away. Emanuel’s administration made strides to shore up the city’s fiscal woes, but residents have complained about mounting taxes and fees. Chicago’s new mayor still must come up with an additional $1 billion in the next four years to continue pulling the city out of a pension crisis.

And the city says its crime problems have been improving over the past two years, recording about half as many murders this year as it did during the same period in 2016. Still, gun and gang violence are pervasive and the city had more than 550 homicides in 2018, more than in the nation’s two larger cities, New York and Los Angeles.

Race has often played an outsize role in politics in Chicago, a city that is essentially evenly split between white, black and Latino residents. On Tuesday, though, the contest between two African American women scrambled the usual political calculus, or what one Chicagoan, Ra Joy, described as its habit of “tribal voting,” in which politicians could count on support from voters of their own race.

In February, during the most crowded mayoral primary in city history, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle topped a far larger array of candidates of various ethnicities, races and genders, removing all the others from Tuesday’s runoff. That left political alignments few Chicagoans had seen before: Lightfoot pursuing white voters on the city’s Northwest and Southwest sides; both women seeking black voters from a base on the South Side that had leaned toward a different black candidate in February; parts of Chicago’s North Side lakefront loaded with signs for Lightfoot.

Some residents said the history-making nature of the election — regardless of the winner — was energizing. But others seemed nonchalant, perhaps partly because Chicago has already seen such milestones. In 1983, the city picked its first black mayor, Harold Washington, in a racially charged election; a term before that, in 1979, the city chose its first female mayor, Jane Byrne.

In many ways, the election transformed into a referendum on Chicago’s political culture, known for its miserable ranking on most measures of corruption, its political machine and its habit of keeping family dynasties in power.

Lightfoot, who was partner at a prominent law firm, Mayer Brown, portrayed her status as a political newcomer as a sign of strength, pledging to dismantle City Hall’s old political ways and to “bring in the light.”

Preckwinkle, the longtime Cook County board president, tried to cast her experience as essential for managing a city the size of Chicago, while simultaneously reminding voters that she had — when she was first elected as an alderman years ago — regularly bucked the political establishment.

As the election season played out, impatience over political corruption seemed to intensify among voters, in part because a major corruption scandal was unfolding at City Hall. Federal authorities have accused the City Council’s longest-serving alderman, Ed Burke, of running an old-school shakedown, even as the local news media reported that a second alderman had cooperated with the authorities, secretly recording his conversations at City Hall for months.

Of the city’s 50 aldermen, 15 seats were up for runoff elections Tuesday, but Burke, who has denied any wrongdoing, won re-election to another term in February, winning a margin large enough to avoid a runoff.

In recent weeks, the campaign for mayor had grown intense, boiling over with angry exchanges during debates and back-and-forths over ads and endorsements. In truth, though, the two candidates appeared to have relatively few major policy differences.

Both Lightfoot and Preckwinkle portrayed themselves as progressives. Both talked about bringing more equity to Chicago, ensuring that top-level education, affordable housing and investment ought to be spread more fairly across a long-divided city, not limited to white neighborhoods or to wealthy neighborhoods on the city’s North Side.

For Abraham Lacy, 33, a Chicagoan who was voting on the South Side on Tuesday, the city was facing urgent challenges with finances, schools and crime — challenges that may need someone with deep experience.

“At this point in time, you need someone in there that’s going to really do the job,” Lacy said after casting his ballot for Preckwinkle at an elementary school. He added: “It’s tough to have someone new come in when you have this many things going on.”

In the end, many voters said they were driven more by their perceptions about politics than about policy. Lightfoot, her supporters said, offered the promise of a new order and a rejection of the politics of a generation ago.

“It’s because of Chicago,” Deepti Pareenja, 37, said, after casting her ballot on the city’s Northwest Side for Lightfoot, in part because of the candidate’s status as a political outsider. “We have a history of corruption with people who’ve been ingrained in politics for multiple decades.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/chicago-election-lightfoot-preckwinkle.html" id="06a5483b-4742-30b6-ac5f-f80caae86433">The New York Times</a>.

Chicago Votes on a New Mayor. Either Way, a Black Woman Will Win.

CHICAGO — Chicagoans on Tuesday were picking a new mayor in an election that came down to a choice between one of the city’s best-known, longtime politicians and a newcomer who has never held an elected post.

With 14 candidates — more than this city has ever seen before in a mayor’s race — it was uncertain how much would even be known by day’s end. No candidate was expected to win more than 50 percent of the vote, but the balloting was expected to winnow the choices to two people and a runoff election on April 2.

Campaign forums have often looked like a reunion of Chicago’s best-known political figures — a former police superintendent, a former public schools chief, a former police board head, a former city clerk.

Among the names familiar to voters: Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president and chairwoman of the county’s Democratic Party; Susana Mendoza, the state comptroller; and William M. Daley, a brother of this city’s longest-serving mayor (Richard M.) and a son of the second-longest-serving mayor (Richard J.).

But with so many candidates and no clear favorite, the race was seen as up for grabs — a rare circumstance in a city where mayors have more often held office for long stretches and where incumbents are usually on the ballot. Richard M. Daley, who ran Chicago for 22 years before Emanuel arrived in 2011, was sometimes known as “Mayor for Life.”

So many choices seemed to have left some Chicagoans flummoxed — unsure, even in the final hours, whom they would vote for. Some political strategists said they wondered if that might discourage some people from voting at all in the election, which is technically nonpartisan, though Democrats reliably win.

As voters streamed into a polling place in Rogers Park, on the city’s Far North Side, many said they were disappointed with the choices, even if there were a lot of them.

“I still haven’t made up my mind,” said Brian Koch, 58, a retired computer programmer, as he walked down a snowy sidewalk in front of Sullivan High School.

He had only one guiding principle in mind: If a candidate had been in politics too long, he would be voting for someone else. “If they’re in, get them out,” Koch said. “There’s just so many of them and a lot have a bad history.”

By late afternoon, Chicago appeared to be headed for a historically low voter turnout rate. Fewer than 430,000 ballots had been cast, including mail-in and early votes, from among the city’s 1.58 million registered voters, said Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

“If there was ever a time when your vote counted more, I can’t think of one,” he said.

Emanuel upended Chicago’s political landscape when he announced in September that he would not seek a third term. Emanuel — who had been sharply criticized over his handling of school closings, crime and police misconduct and had faced political challengers — said at the time that the mayor’s office “has been the job of a lifetime, but it is not a job for a lifetime.” After that, many more candidates stepped forward.

Whoever becomes the next mayor of this city of 2.7 million people will face an array of complicated, sometimes interconnected, challenges all at once.

The city’s pension system will require an additional $1 billion in revenue by the end of the new mayor’s first term. Yet residents say they are weary from years of increases in their property tax bills and fees. Crime and gang violence remains a deep worry for many, even as the city contends with its long history of troubled relations between the police force and residents, especially in the black community.

And although tourism has boomed downtown, development along the Chicago River has flourished and corporations have flocked to the city in recent years, some neighborhoods on the South and West Sides have struggled with disinvestment, schools closing and people moving away.

On Tuesday, Jackie Ropski, a marketing director for an elementary school, said that she saw this election as more important than some, with so many candidates to choose from and at a pivotal moment in Chicago history.

“I think there is a certain amount of weight on this particular election,” Ropski said, after voting in the Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. “Personally, I think education takes prominence among all the issues, but whoever is mayor has to take a layered approach. How do you solve poverty, crime, neighborhood tensions, education? That’s complex.”

Jewel Morris, 62, a retired probation officer, said he had voted for Preckwinkle, though he deemed her the “lesser of two evils” compared with William Daley, who is known as Bill.

“No Daleys, no Bushes, no dynasties,” said Morris, who lives on the Near West Side. “We don’t need any of that.”

The Chicago of 2019 is better than when he was a child, he said. The architecture is unparalleled, the restaurants are world-class and tourists are coming to the city in droves. But the inequality feels like the Chicago of his youth.

“You’re looking at a tale of two cities,” he said. “It’s still the city of neighborhoods and still the city of segregation.”

At Manny’s deli, south of downtown, Natalie Wasso said she was leaning toward voting for Daley, if she voted at all.

Wasso, 32, a phlebotomist who lives on the Southwest Side, said she trusted the Daley family, which led the city for most of her childhood. Her grandmother had always voted for Daleys in past elections.

“We never had a problem: That’s the name we know in Chicago,” Wasso said. “He can relate to us regular people.”

In Little Village, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood southwest of downtown, Mendoza — one of the many candidates — made her closing argument Tuesday afternoon to voters eating at a restaurant.

She told diners, rather bluntly, that she needed every supporter she could find to crack the top two and qualify for the runoff.

“Every vote, when you’re talking about 14 candidates, is potentially that vote that’s going to differentiate you from being in first, second or third,” Mendoza said. “No one wants to be in third.”

Her pitch did not win everyone over. Ray Arroyo, who was sitting nearby wearing an “I voted” wristband, said in an interview that Mendoza was “another cog in the machine.” He declined to say whom he voted for, but said it was not Mendoza.

But Mendoza caught Paola Garcia, 24, a retail worker and community college student, just before she planned to go to her polling place. Garcia took a pamphlet from Mendoza, but said she remained unsure how she would vote. Garcia said she was looking for a candidate who would address the city’s endemic gang violence and stick up for the rights of immigrants.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/chicago-mayor-election.html" id="360dd5c3-7018-3e4b-a7ff-938d20cdb9da">The New York Times</a>.

CHICAGO — After a frenetic, chaotic campaign, the nation’s third largest city waited Tuesday evening for votes to be counted in a race to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago Voters Head to the Polls in Free-for-All Mayoral Election

As the middle of the nation awoke on Thursday, the deep freeze seemed to have settled in for a long, unwanted visit, disrupting life across an entire region for much of a week, contributing to deaths and injuries, and leaving residents impatient to emerge from their homes and get back to normal.

The grim temperatures and gusty winds lingered in the Midwest, and had spread to the Northeast.

— Temperatures broke records in some places, and remained low, near record levels, in much of the Midwest on Thursday morning. Minneapolis was minus 23, with a wind chill of minus 38, the National Weather Service said. Chicago was at minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 41. And Milwaukee hit minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 40.

— At least eight deaths have been connected to the Midwest’s dangerously cold weather system, according to The Associated Press, including that of a University of Iowa student who was found behind an academic hall several hours before dawn on Wednesday.

— The sustained cold taxed energy systems across the Midwest, leading to some outages and urgent calls to customers to reduce the heat in their homes.

— Many schools, businesses and restaurants remained shuttered on Thursday, though some offices were reopening and many more were expected to reopen Friday, when temperatures are expected to rise.

— Airlines have already canceled more than 2,000 flights scheduled for Thursday in the United States, according to FlightAware. On Wednesday, cancellations topped 2,700.

— The East Coast was feeling the bitter cold, too. At 6 a.m. the temperature in New York City hit 2 degrees, but with the wind it felt like 17 below zero.

An Iowa college student is among the dead

In Iowa City, a student at the University of Iowa was found dead in the early morning hours of Wednesday. Gerald Belz, 18 and a pre-med student, was found lying outside, unresponsive, near a campus building after 2 a.m. local time.

He was one of at least eight people whose deaths were believed to be tied to the streak of extreme cold and icy weather in recent days. Among the others were an elderly Illinois man who fell and was found not far from his home; a man who was hit by a snowplow in the Chicago region; a couple in a vehicle crash along snowy roads in Indiana; and a Milwaukee man who the police say was found in his garage and likely froze to death.

Hospitals have treated dozens of frostbite patients

Throughout the Midwest, hospitals reported patients arriving with symptoms tied to the weather. The Illinois Department of Public Health said at least 30 people statewide had been to emergency rooms for frostbite or hypothermia-related visits by Wednesday morning.

At Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, the emergency department reported “many patients” who were injured or ill because of the weather. Frostbite cases alone led to at least 13 admissions.

“It’s busier than it would normally be,” Douglas D. Brunette, an emergency room doctor in Minneapolis, said Wednesday afternoon. “But it’s not a mass casualty incident yet.”

Temperatures are plunging in the Northeast, too

Officials in New York and other parts of the Northeast warned residents to prepare for temperatures that, while not nearly as cold as the Midwest, could still be dangerous.

In Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut, where it was expected to dip into the single digits or lower, officials opened warming centers.

In New York City, where it was 10 degrees at midday, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged people to “bundle up and stay inside as much as possible.” With wind chills expected to fall below zero, city officials warned landlords to provide adequate heat to their tenants.

Conditions were worse in the western part of the state, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a state of emergency in several counties and instructed some state workers to stay home. More than 13 inches of snow fell Wednesday in Buffalo, a record for Jan. 30, and more was falling on Thursday.

Records were broken, but there is some warmer weather coming

At least two cities in Illinois reached record lows overnight, as a dangerously deep freeze kept its hold on the Midwest.

In Rockford, temperatures dipped to minus 30, breaking a previous record of minus 27 from Jan. 10, 1982. Moline, Illinois, on the border with Iowa, also broke a record, reaching minus 29 on Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

Chicago did not reach a record low overnight — the previous record was minus 27, from Jan. 20, 1985. But the city was expected to be hit with 1 to 3 inches of snow on Thursday, beginning in the late afternoon and stretching into the evening.

After several days of brutally cold weather, Chicagoans have something to look forward to, said Matt Friedlein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“We’ll be on our way up here soon,” Friedlein said. “In fact, later in the week, it looks like temperatures in the 40s across much of northern Illinois. No matter what, it will be a significant warm-up when you consider how cold we are right now.”

Rescuers come to the aid of hundreds stranded in their cars

Car breakdowns and medical emergencies took on greater urgency across the Midwest as police and fire departments dealt with dangerously low temperatures and increased workloads.

The Illinois State Police assisted more than 1,300 drivers over an eight-hour period on Wednesday, about 10 times troopers’ normal workload. In Michigan, where the extreme cold thwarted efforts to treat frozen roadways, emergency workers closed part of Interstate 675 on Thursday after a series of crashes. And in Indiana, a state trooper helped a dog named Marley and its owner warm up after finding them in a stalled car along a highway.

The cold was especially risky for those surrounded by water. The Coast Guard used air boats to rescue seven people stranded in an ice shanty off the coast of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. And on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where the dangerous weather made plane travel impossible, another Coast Guard ship sliced through the ice to rescue a woman needing medical attention.

“The crew responded admirably in adverse conditions to answer the call,” said Lt. Steele Johnson, the commanding officer of the ship that rescued the woman, in a statement. “We’re happy to have done our part in getting her the advanced medical treatment she needed.”

Calls to reduce the heat despite the frigid cold

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy asked customers to conserve power and reduce their thermostats to 63 degrees or 60 degrees, depending on their location. Xcel also paid for hotel rooms for customers who lost their gas supply in Princeton, Minnesota, where the temperature on Thursday morning was minus 35.

“Your cooperation is critical to try to prevent widespread natural gas outages,” the company posted on its website.

In Michigan, a fire Wednesday night at a Consumers Energy facility led to fears of a natural gas shortage. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer went on television late at night urging residents of the state’s Lower Peninsula to reduce their thermostats to 65 degrees or less.

“You can play a role in helping people across the state survive these extreme temperatures,” Whitmer said in a statement.

Consumers Energy also asked several manufacturers to halt production because of the natural gas shortage. Erin Davis, a General Motors spokeswoman, said work was stopped on Wednesday night at 11 plants in Michigan. Many workers had been told not to report for their shifts on Thursday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/extreme-cold-weather.html" id="1b2e615f-e76d-3243-a7b8-d073b7a01471">The New York Times</a>.

CHICAGO — A bitter, biting cold landed on the Midwest, and then it stayed.

Polar Vortex Live Updates: Bitter Cold Spreads From Midwest to East Coast

Temperatures broke records in some places, and remained low, near record levels, in much of the Midwest on Thursday morning. Minneapolis was minus 23, with a wind chill of minus 38, the National Weather Service said. Chicago was at minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 41. And Milwaukee hit minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 40.

At least eight deaths have been connected to the Midwest’s dangerously cold weather system, according to The Associated Press.

The sustained cold taxed energy systems across the Midwest, leading to some outages and urgent calls to customers to reduce the heat in their homes.

Many schools, businesses and restaurants remained shuttered on Thursday, though some offices were reopening and many more were expected to reopen Friday, when temperatures are expected to rise.

Here are the latest developments:

— Many schools, businesses and restaurants were expected to remain shuttered on Thursday, though some offices were reopening and many more were expected to reopen Friday, when temperatures are expected to rise.

Chicago did not reach a record low overnight — the previous record was minus 27, from Jan. 20, 1985. But the city was expected to be hit with one to three inches of snow on Thursday, beginning in the late afternoon and stretching into the evening.

“We’ll be on our way up here soon,” Friedlein said. “In fact, later in the week, it looks like temperatures in the 40s across much of northern Illinois. No matter what, it will be a significant warm up when you consider how cold we are right now.”

Schools and colleges close to keep students out of the cold

Schools across a broad section of the nation canceled classes as the dangerous freeze descended, and some said they were pondering canceling classes again Thursday. Many Midwestern institutions lean toward staying open through snowstorms and cold spells, but this one was different. For a second consecutive day, students on Wednesday were told to stay home at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, where there was a forecast high of minus 3, relatively warm compared with other parts of the Midwest.

Hundreds of thousands of younger students in schools across the country’s midsection also had no classes Wednesday.

— Temperatures remained low, near record levels, in much of the Midwest on Thursday morning. Minneapolis was minus 23, with a wind chill of minus 38, the National Weather Service said. Chicago was at minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 41. And Milwaukee hit minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 40.

Kathy Byrne, the daughter of Jane Byrne, who died in 2014, said she expected the new mayor to face some of the same challenges her mother did, including “old-school thinkers” in city government. But Kathy Byrne said other issues her mother confronted — such as “frivolous” coverage of hairstyles and wardrobe — had mostly faded with the times.

“It’s not as shocking as it was back then, so that’s wonderful progress,” Kathy Byrne said of the historic nature of this election. “Why it’s taken so long? I don’t know.”

That resonated with some voters. Nora Handler, 63, a North Side resident, said she voted for Lightfoot because of her outsider status as well as a pledge to improve how the police interact with people with mental illnesses.

“In Chicago, we talk about the ‘Chicago Way’ and the machine politics,” Handler said. “I thought she was not involved in any of that.”

Preckwinkle’s record won a vote from Matt Smith, 30, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University, who voted in Rogers Park on the Far North Side on Tuesday. “I don’t think she’s perfect, but I think she has the more progressive record,” he said. “I wasn’t too excited about Lori being a former federal prosecutor.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="bca47657-e632-40bd-9d13-14772b9aaa1f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/chicago-election-lightfoot-preckwinkle.html">The New York Times</a>.

Chicago votes on a new mayor, either way, a black woman will win

Lightfoot, who has never held elective office, easily won the race, overwhelming a better-known, longtime politician and turning her outsider status into an asset in a city with a history of corruption and insider dealings. Lightfoot, 56, beat Toni Preckwinkle, a former alderman who is president of the Cook County Board and who had for years been viewed as a highly formidable candidate for mayor.

For Chicago, Lightfoot’s win signaled a notable shift in the mood of voters and a rejection of an entrenched political culture that has more often rewarded insiders and dismissed unknowns. For many voters, the notion that someone with no political ties might become mayor of Chicago seemed an eye-opening counterpoint to a decades-old, often-repeated mantra about this city’s political order: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.”

For some of Lightfoot’s supporters, the significance of her victory was monumental, going beyond a single candidate or city. “Look, nothing personal, but it’s not the good old boys club anymore,” said Kimberly Smith, 40, who was born and raised on the South Side and said she thought the election marked a turning point in Chicago politics. “I feel empowered.”

National advocates for gay rights celebrated Lightfoot’s win. “Now young queer women and women of color can see themselves reflected in a position of major political leadership,” said Stephanie Sandberg, executive director of LPAC, an organization that works to build the political power of LGBTQ women.

Lightfoot’s rise was unexpected only weeks ago, when 13 other candidates were vying to run the nation’s third-largest city, many of them far better known — with decades of experience in Chicago politics and with dynastic names like Daley. Lightfoot is a lawyer who has served in appointed positions, including as head of the Chicago Police Board and as a leader of a task force that issued a scathing report on relations between the Chicago police and black residents, but she was not widely known around the city until recent months.

Lightfoot — Chicago’s 56th mayor — arrives at a pivotal moment for a Democratic city that has for the past eight years been led by Emanuel, who surprised many residents when he chose not to seek re-election.

Race has often played an outsize role in politics in Chicago, which is essentially evenly split between white, black and Latino residents. On Tuesday, though, the contest between two African American women scrambled the usual political calculus, or what one Chicagoan, Ra Joy, described as its habit of “tribal voting,” in which politicians count on support from voters of their own race.

Some residents said the history-making nature of the election was energizing, while others seemed nonchalant, perhaps partly because Chicago has seen similar milestones. In 1983, the city picked its first black mayor, Harold Washington, in a racially charged election; a term before that, in 1979, the city chose its first female mayor, Jane Byrne.

“It’s not as shocking as it was back then, so that’s wonderful progress,” Kathy Byrne, the daughter of Jane Byrne, who died in 2014, said of the historic nature of this year’s election. “Why it’s taken so long? I don’t know.”

Lightfoot, who was partner at a prominent law firm, Mayer Brown, portrayed her newcomer status as a sign of strength, pledging to dismantle City Hall’s old political ways and to “bring in the light.” Still, her claim of being an outsider was questioned by some younger activists in the city, who pointed to her jobs in the Richard M. Daley administration and as a police oversight official during Emanuel’s tenure, not to mention her role as a prosecutor.

Preckwinkle, the longtime Cook County board president, had tried to cast her experience as essential for managing a city the size of Chicago, while simultaneously reminding voters that she had — when she was first elected as an alderman years ago — regularly bucked the political establishment.

But as the election season played out, impatience over political corruption seemed to intensify among voters, in part because a major corruption scandal was unfolding at City Hall. Federal authorities have accused the City Council’s longest-serving alderman, Ed Burke, of running an old-school shakedown, even as the local news media reported that a second alderman had cooperated with the authorities, secretly recording his conversations at City Hall for months.

Rarely does this city get new, unexpected mayors. So Chicagoans watched with curiosity and uncertainty about what a Lightfoot administration would truly look like. Lightfoot has portrayed herself as a progressive, who promised to usher in a new era of accountability and transparency at City Hall. At times, she seemed to be running against Chicago politics in the public imagination: A television ad used an image of a smoke-filled room and spoke darkly of the “Chicago machine.”

Lightfoot has spoken frequently of equity and inclusion, of redistributing city funds to spread the prosperity of downtown and the North Side to neighborhoods that have been neglected.

“It’s unacceptable, the condition of our communities on the South and West sides,” she said during the campaign. “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.”

Lightfoot favors an elected school board, which would take power away from her own office. (Currently, the mayor appoints members of the school board.)

She has vowed to significantly change the Chicago Police Department, increasing training and reducing officer misconduct.

But her answers to the urgent question of how the city will pay its staggering bills have not been comprehensive.

She has said that she will help the city meet its financial commitments by legalizing recreational marijuana and building a casino in Chicago. But she has not explained fully how she would solve the city’s imminent pension crisis.

“Whoever is elected as mayor is going to face a very difficult financial situation,” said Laurence Msall, the president of the Civic Federation, a watchdog group.

For Abraham Lacy, 33, a Chicagoan who voted for Lightfoot’s opponent on the South Side on Tuesday, the city’s urgent challenges of finances, schools and crime called for someone with deep experience.

“It’s tough to have someone new come in when you have this many things going on,” Lacy said.

In the end, though, many voters said they were driven more by their perceptions about politics than about policy. Lightfoot, her supporters said, offered the promise of a new order and a rejection of the politics of a generation ago.

“It’s because of Chicago,” Deepti Pareenja, 37, said, after casting her ballot on the city’s Northwest Side for Lightfoot. “We have a history of corruption with people who’ve been ingrained in politics for multiple decades.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="5352bb29-96fe-4c70-b818-cfdcfa3ac989" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/chicago-election-lightfoot-preckwinkle.html">The New York Times</a>.

Lori Lightfoot Is Elected Chicago Mayor, Becoming First Black Woman to Lead City

CHICAGO — Chicago became the largest U.S. city ever to elect a black woman as its mayor as voters on Tuesday chose Lori Lightfoot, a former prosecutor, to replace Rahm Emanuel. When she takes office in May, Lightfoot also will be the city’s first openly gay mayor.

Lori Lightfoot is elected Chicago mayor, becoming first black woman to lead city

<h1>CHICAGO — Two African-American women are headed for a runoff in the Chicago mayor’s race, setting up an election that will make history.</h1>

Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor and sharp critic of the status quo at City Hall, won enough votes in Chicago’s election for mayor on Tuesday to advance to a runoff in April, The Associated Press reported.

The closest candidates behind Lightfoot were separated by a small margin, and all the votes had not been counted. But one of them — William M. Daley, a member of Chicago’s political dynasty of Daleys — conceded defeat late Tuesday and said Toni Preckwinkle, the county board president and chairwoman of the county’s Democratic Party, would advance to the runoff.

Either Lightfoot or Preckwinkle would be the first African-American woman to lead the nation’s third largest city, succeeding Mayor Rahm Emanuel as mayor.

Preckwinkle, 71, a long-established politician who has often been urged to run for mayor, had been widely expected to do well Tuesday. The success of Lightfoot, 56, who has never run for elective office before, was far more surprising; she was less well known in Chicago’s political sphere and had far less money.

Her vote total, too, was seen as something of a rebuke to Emanuel’s tenure as mayor and to Chicago’s old political history. Lightfoot had tried to define her campaign as a rejection of machine politics and a refocusing on Chicago’s struggling neighborhoods, not just its gleaming downtown.

“I never thought that this could be an option,” said Liza Booker, 29, a South Side resident who said she voted for Preckwinkle but was excited about the possibility of a runoff between two black women.

With 92 percent of votes counted on Tuesday night, they were sprinkled widely across the massive field of candidates who had hoped to replace Emanuel, who did not run for a third term. Lightfoot had the highest vote tally, with about 17 percent. Preckwinkle had 16 percent, and Daley, who was well funded and many here had expected to easily make the runoff, came in just below 15 percent.

With 14 candidates — more than this city has ever seen before in a mayor’s race — almost no one had expected a new mayor to win outright on Tuesday and avoid a runoff on April 2.

For months, Chicago’s campaign has looked like a reunion of its best-known political figures — a former police superintendent, a former public schools chief, a former city clerk.

Among the names most familiar to voters were Preckwinkle and Daley, a brother of this city’s longest-serving mayor (Richard M.) and a son of the second-longest-serving mayor (Richard J.). Richard M. Daley, who ran Chicago for 22 years before Emanuel arrived in 2011, was sometimes known as “Mayor for Life,” and some Chicagoans thought the Daley name alone would at least advance the latest Daley into a runoff.

But with so many candidates and no clear favorite, the race was seen as up for grabs — a rare circumstance in a city where mayors have more often held office for long stretches and where incumbents are usually on the ballot.

On Tuesday, Chicago appeared to be headed for a historically low voter turnout rate. Fewer than 430,000 ballots had been cast by afternoon, including mail-in and early votes, from among the city’s 1.58 million registered voters.

Alex Ruiz, 33, a student and Uber driver, said that the biggest issue that worried him was Chicago’s financial situation and its looming pension obligations. The next mayor, he said, had to get the city’s finances in order to spread confidence to Chicagoans about the state of the city.

Ruiz grew up only a few miles east of his current neighborhood, Irving Park, but his family had steadily moved west throughout his life as gentrification kept pushing them out.

“Everyone’s trying to stay in this city they were born in,” he said. “If we don’t address the financial issues, we’re going to keep driving the middle class out of the city.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="6fc07b96-9660-47bc-aa51-c60c02b64c58" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/chicago-mayor-election.html">The New York Times</a>.

Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor and sharp critic of the status quo at City Hall, won enough votes in Chicago’s election for mayor on Tuesday to advance to a runoff in April, The Associated Press reported.

Two African-American women appear headed for runoff in Chicago's mayor race

<h1>CHICAGO — In one of the most unpredictable, wide-open Chicago elections in generations, residents went to the polls Tuesday to pick a replacement for Rahm Emanuel as mayor of the nation’s third-largest city.</h1>

Among the names familiar to voters: Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president and chairwoman of the county’s Democratic Party; Susana Mendoza, the state comptroller; and Bill Daley, a brother of this city’s longest-serving mayor (Richard M.) and a son of the second-longest-serving mayor (Richard J.).

So many choices seemed to have left some Chicagoans flummoxed — unsure, even in the final hours, whom they would vote for. Some political strategists said they wondered if that might discourage some people from voting at all.

By midday, Chicago appeared to be headed for historically low voter turnout. Fewer than 300,000 ballots had been cast, including mail-in and early votes, from among the city’s 1.5 million registered voters, said Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

Whoever becomes the next mayor will face an array of complicated, sometimes interconnected, challenges all at once.

The city’s pension system will require an additional $1 billion in revenue by the end of the new mayor’s first term. Yet Chicago residents say they are weary from years of increases in their property tax bills and fees. Crime and gang violence remains a deep worry for many, even as the city contends with its long history of troubled relations between the police force and residents, especially in the black community.

And although tourism has boomed downtown, development along the Chicago River has flourished and corporations have flocked to the city in recent years, some neighborhoods on the South and West sides have struggled with disinvestment, schools closing and people moving away.

On Tuesday, Jewel Morris, 62, a retired probation officer, said he had voted for Preckwinkle, though he deemed her the “lesser of two evils” compared with Bill Daley.

This article originally appeared in <a id="0dd5232e-e757-43b4-add7-441b6226634e" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/chicago-mayor-election.html">The New York Times</a>.

Chicago voters head to the polls in free-for-all mayoral election

Campaign forums have often looked like a reunion of Chicago’s best-known political figures — a former police superintendent, a former public schools chief, a former police board head, a former city clerk.

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Julie Bosman, Mitch Smith and Monica Davey

Articles written by the author

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