Lori Lightfoot Heads to Chicago's Runoff for Mayor. Who Is She?

Lightfoot, 56, who now advances to a runoff election April 2, was not nearly as established in Chicago’s political scene as some of the people she beat Tuesday. In fact, she has never held elective office. If elected, Lightfoot would be the city’s first black woman and first openly gay person to hold the office.

In a way, her success seemed to serve as a warning shot to the establishment and a rebuke to the tenure of Emanuel.

Lightfoot, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor, presented herself on the campaign trail as an antidote to his eight years in office. She criticized Emanuel’s decision to close dozens of schools, mainly in Hispanic and black neighborhoods, and focused especially on promises to overhaul the Chicago Police Department and reduce gun violence.

“People feel like the violence is out of control and that there’s no plan,” Lightfoot said in an interview last year.

Just a few years ago, Emanuel turned to Lightfoot during the biggest crisis of his tenure. A Chicago police officer, Jason Van Dyke, had just been charged with murder in the death of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, and protesters were calling for Emanuel’s ouster.

In the months that followed, Lightfoot was chairwoman of a panel that met with residents and produced a scathing report. The document accused the Police Department of systemic racism and found that officers had lost the trust of residents and failed to instill a sense of safety.

“What we heard from people all across the city is they felt like they didn’t even have a claim to the geography in front of their house, on their street, or in their neighborhoods,” Lightfoot said when the report was released in spring 2016.

After the report was made public, Lightfoot drifted away from Emanuel, eventually resigning her role as president of the Chicago Police Board, which oversees officer discipline, and entering the mayoral race in May.

Lightfoot was one of only a handful of figures willing to run against Emanuel, who was widely expected to appear on the ballot until announcing in September that he would not. As the field of candidates grew more vast — the state comptroller, the county board president and a former White House chief of staff were among the late entrants — Lightfoot forged ahead in her campaign.

There were reasons for skepticism: Lightfoot was relatively unknown in the city’s political realm, and her ballot petition signatures were briefly challenged last year. But she surged in at least one poll in the final days and was endorsed by The Chicago Sun-Times.

“She has the vision, values, qualifications and policies to be an effective leader for the whole city, from the hedge fund managers to the fast food workers,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote. “She is calm, focused, principled and independent.”

Lightfoot’s qualifications and outsider persona are likely to be questioned in the runoff campaign, in which she will face Toni Preckwinkle, the county board president and leader of the local Democratic Party.

Preckwinkle, who would also be the first black woman to serve as Chicago’s mayor, noted in her election night speech that Lightfoot had worked in city government under the previous two mayors. And Bridget Gainer, a county commissioner who supported Preckwinkle, said her candidate’s political experience should be seen as an asset.

“We need results, not just rhetoric,” Gainer said. “Chicago is not a training wheels job.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.