In Chicago, voters made history Tuesday night by electing the city’s first African-American woman as mayor. She will also be the city’s first openly gay mayor. Lori Lightfoot won a landslide victory, beating her opponent Toni Preckwinkle in a runoff vote and receiving 73 percent of votes.
Lightfoot is a newcomer to electoral politics, who previously worked as a federal prosecutor. In 2015, now-outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to head the Chicago Police Board. She was also chair of the Police Accountability Task Force in 2016, which issued a damning report after the police killing of African-American teenager Laquan McDonald. Part of her mayoral campaign focused on ousting Chicago’s political machine. This is Lightfoot addressing her supporters in a victory speech.
Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot: “Together, we can and will finally put the interests of our people, all of our people, ahead of the interests of a powerful few. Together, we can and will make Chicago a place where your ZIP code doesn’t determine your destiny.”
We’ll have more on Chicago’s historic mayoral election later in the show with professor and author Barbara Ransby.