Chicago City Wire

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is out after what many have deemed a disastrous four years as the city’s chief executive.

Lighfoot finished third in the vote, failing to make the April 4 runoff.

“Serving as your mayor has been the honor of a lifetime, and I am so grateful to all of you who have stood beside me these last four years,” Lighfoot said on Facebook after the loss was announced.

With 88% of votes counted, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas made the runoff along with Cook County commissioner for the 1st District Brandon Johnson.

Vallas’s had 34.9% of the vote with 164,610 votes to Johnson’s 20.2% with 96,260 votes.

Lightfoot finished with 16.6% of the vote and 78,865 votes.

Lightfoot is the first Chicago mayor to lose reelection since Jane Byrne in 1983. Byrne was the city’s first female mayor. She also held office for only a single term from 1979 to 1983.

Despite Johnson winning the endorsement of the Chicago Teacher’s Union in January Lightfoot was unconvinced of the commissioner’s appeal.

“Lightfoot scoffing at CTU’s mayoral endorsement: ‘They’ve endorsed Brandon Johnson. God bless. Brandon Johnson isn’t going to be the mayor of this city,’” Semafor writer Dave Weigel said on Twitter.

Chicago’s Morning Answer host Dan Proft used Lightfoot’s loss to poke fun at her superhero character “Rona Destroyer” which she unveiled in a highly panned press conference in the fall of 2020.

“We'll always have The Ronabusters. #DongGone," Proft said on Twitter.

Proft had been highly critical of Lightfoot’s reign on his AM 560 radio show.

Under Lighfoot's leadership the city saw a huge spike in violent crime.

"Lightfoot’s leadership and executive temperament have faltered as crime has mounted,” Wirepoints said in a report noting Chicago’s status as one of the nation’s murder capitals.  

“When McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski rightly warned that outsized crime threatened the city’s economic future, Lightfoot wouldn’t hear of it and said he needed to ‘educate himself.’ She calls her critics on crime “haters” even as the city in 2022 clocked a 41 percent increase in major crimes vs. 2021, and a 33 percent increase since 2019.”

“Police morale has plunged under Lightfoot’s management. Many officers have fled regular patrols for assignments in special units. Retirements and resignations are common; more than 1,000 officers left in 2022. A string of suicides has rocked the department. Replacements are being hired but sworn officer staffing levels are down 12 percent between January of 2019 and January of 2023.”