Covering the election results for the Mayor of Chicago from last night. Democrats Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will take center stage as the field has narrowed and the incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot has lost her reelection bid. Becoming the first Mayor of Chicago to do so in 40 years. Listen until the end for this week’s hidden gem!
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Chicago Mayoral Race Heads for a Runoff Election
It’s no surprise Mayor Lori Lightfoot couldn’t win reelection. When she ran back in 2019 the political atmosphere was different. Doesn’t that sound familiar? At first Lightfoot played really nice about President Trump but her candor quickly changed when she won against Toni Preckwinkle head of the Chicago Public School Union at the time in a runoff election for Mayor of Chicago.
Let me premise my dialogue and frame the conversation for you. Most mayors are only in office for one year then they are up for reelection. In some towns two years. But folks, mostly one year. In Chicago, and major cities a mayor will get a 4-year term. That is as much as a Governor. That is a lot of free reign, a lot of power in one major populous of taxpaying citizens.
Lightfoot was thrust upon us as a prosecutor who was tough on crime, an ally of the LGBT community among other things. Her relationship with Eddie Johnson who she bragged about and later fired as Chief of Police was one of her biggest downfalls as Mayor of Chicago. I’m sure you will read that in a book somewhere.
When Covid-19 hit and was ramping up, the crime wave that followed tragedies like Geroge Floyd’s untimely death and Mayor Lightfoot’s inability to work diligently with the Chicago Police Department continued to diminish the city’s image and also irritated the city’s residents. Although these things have passed they are not forgotten.
I believe the 56th Mayor of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s tenure is marred by miscalculations, being under prepared, and being ill-equipped for the task at hand. The battle over keeping the Chicago Bears in Chicago and not relocating to Arlington Heights is only another wrinkle in the fold.
The one good thing that proponents of hers will say is that she was able to secure the deal to bring the Obama Public Library to Chicago. Which is ironic because the person she went to break the ground with on the Obama’s Public Library Development was Governor J.B. Pritzker a democrat who won his recent reelection and did not come out and endorse Mayor Lori Lightfoot. They had an embattled professional working partnership that never looked as if any side won.
And now a new leaf stems from the rye of the ancient past, and a new mayor must be chosen. Will Paul Vallas or Brandon Johnson be the next Mayor of Chicago? Paul Vallas has the lead if you look at the data we have so far. Now the rest of the people who voted for the lost candidates will have to decide and usually, that benefits the favorite from the prior election meaning Paul Vallas has a good chance. I think either way a runoff election is a great thing. It shows that people are keeping an open mind and want the best option to represent the City of Chicago.
If you look where Brandon Johnson outperformed Paul Vallas on the map, we see it was very tightly contested. Where Paul Vallas outperformed on the electoral map you see he won by a sizable margin. Paul Vallas I know has gone on a lot of media and talk shows, even some of my personal favorites like Mancow. Vallas is a democrat that switched over there when Obama won the presidency, and he is one of the bright spots of the party. One of their best thinkers. Brandon Johnson is still a bit of an unknown, worked on the board of police accountability and some other organizations but we do see that he is a hardworking individual. We will see who the winner is on April 4th when Chicago has the runoff election completed.
ODD MAN OUT 