The night Chicago died…
Via Chicago Tribune:
Chicago will elect its first African-American female mayor after former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle won enough votes Tuesday amid a record field of 14 candidates to move on to an April runoff election.
It’s only the second time Chicago has had a runoff campaign for mayor, which occurs when no candidate collects more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
Unofficial results showed Lightfoot with 17.5 percent of the vote, Preckwinkle with 16 percent and Bill Daley with 14.7 percent, with 96 percent of precincts counted. They were trailed by businessman Willie Wilson with 10 percent, state Comptroller Susana Mendoza with 9 percent, activist and policy consultant Amara Enyia with 8 percent, Southwest Side attorney Jerry Joyce with 7 percent and former CPS board President Gery Chico with 6 percent.
The remaining six candidates, former CPS CEO Paul Vallas, former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, former Ald. Bob Fioretti, tech entrepreneur Neal Sales-Griffin and attorney John Kozlar, each collected less than 6 percent.
The results set up a showdown between two self-styled progressives — Preckwinkle, chair of the Cook County Democratic Party and a former longtime alderman who rose from Hyde Park’s bastion of liberal politics, versus Lightfoot, a first-time candidate who has railed against Chicago’s history of machine politics and vowed to usher in a new era of reform at City Hall.
One of them will become Chicago’s second female mayor, following Jane Byrne, who served one term from 1979 to 1983. And if Lightfoot is elected, she would become the city’s first openly gay mayor. Both would become the second African-American elected Chicago mayor after Harold Washington, who served from 1983 until he died in 1987.
The race marks the city’s second consecutive runoff, after then-Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a second round in 2015, before the mayor went on to win handily.
In declaring victory Tuesday night, neither candidate spoke directly to the historic nature of the results, though Preckwinkle hinted at it.
“We may not yet be at the finish line, but we should acknowledge that history is being made,” Preckwinkle told supporters at a raucous event in Hyde Park. “It’s clear we’re at a defining moment in our city’s history, but the challenges that our city faces are not simply ideological. It’s not enough to say Chicago stands at a crossroads. We need to fight to change its course.”