In a historic victory, Lori Lightfoot last night was elected mayor of Chicago, becoming the city’s first Black woman mayor, its first openly LGBTQ mayor, and the first openly LGBTQ woman of color to be elected mayor in any of America’s 100 largest cities. She’s also a proud lesbian raising a 10-year-old daughter with her spouse Amy Eshleman.
Born to working-class parents, Lightfoot, 56, paid her way through college with summer and work-study jobs and student loans, then attended the University of Chicago Law School on full scholarship. Her resume is varied; she has been a prosecutor at the law firm of Mayer Brown, where she also served as co-chair of the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee; an assistant United States attorney in the criminal division; and chief of staff and general counsel of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications, where she ran day-to-day operations including 911 services, homeland security, large special events, and other emergency services. Additionally, she was interim first deputy of the Chicago Department of Procurement Services, where she revised the city’s then-$2 billion annual procurement processes and the city’s minority and woman-owned business certification and compliance programs. She was also chair of the Police Accountability Task Force and president of the Chicago Police Board.
Lightfoot, who has never held elected office, won against long-time politician Toni Preckwinkle in a historic race between two Black women for the city’s top job. The Chicago Sun Times‘ endorsement of Lightfoot said, “She has been a powerfully influential public servant. She has been an outspoken critic of bad moves by City Hall, calling out her own bosses. She has also — and this is not widely understood — been a force for honesty and integrity behind the scenes.” When in 2014 a police officer shot and killed a teenager, Laquan McDonald, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was heavily criticized for not releasing a video of the shooting for 13 months. He appointed Lightfoot to head a task force to look into police practices, “and the task force came back with a report that was scathing. It called distrust of the police ‘justified’ and said the police union contract turned a ‘code of silence into official policy,” noted the Sun Times. “Lightfoot, quietly but insistently, had assumed a leading role in turning our town upside down. For the better.”
During her campaign, Lightfoot promised to continue her work to reform the police, stop gun violence, invest in neighborhood schools and affordable housing, and create an “elected and representative school board” in lieu of the current mayor-appointed one, among other initiatives. Her website also notes, “As an out and proud black lesbian, Lori understands the importance of safeguarding the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community,” including transgender people and LGBTQ+ youth and seniors. In her LGBTQ+ Policy paper, she also commendably says, “We are a diverse LGBTQ+ community and my experiences do not speak for all who count themselves as members.”
The New York Times observes that she will have a tough job turning around the city’s financial situation. Still, voters were clearly looking for a change, and perhaps Lightfoot will bring the energy and ideas that the country’s third largest city needs.
Lightfoot is the third LGBTQ parent to be mayor of a top 100 city (and only the seventh LGBTQ person overall), joining Annise Parker of Houston (2010 to 2016) and Jenny Durkan of Seattle (2017 to present). This comes on the heels of a wave of LGBTQ parents taking office after last November’s election.
Watch this humorous campaign video in which Lightfoot asserts, “I’m running for mayor for our daughter’s future and all Chicago’s children. That’s why nothing will distract me from bringing real change to Chicago”—while her daughter dances and plays trumpet in the background, trying in vain to distract her.
