Chicago mayoral election: What's happening Tuesday and the issue leading the debates
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday faces eight challengers in the city's elections, a tough reelection campaign for an incumbent who made history as the first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the role.
With that many candidates in the race, it is unlikely that anyone will exceed the 50% threshold needed to win the officially nonpartisan election outright. That means the winner is likely to be decided in an April 4 runoff between the top two vote-getters.
Most observers peg the race as a four-person contest among Lightfoot, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, U.S. Rep. Jesus "Chuy" Garcia and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson.
Vallas, the only white candidate in the race, is positioning himself as a moderate, with backing from the Chicago police union. Garcia, the only Hispanic candidate, is focusing hard on Latino neighborhoods and Hispanic TV and radio. Johnson is an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union with a strong ground game made up of union volunteers.
Also running are community activist Ja'mal Green, Alderman Sophia King, state Rep. Kam Buckner, Alderman Roderick Sawyer and business owner Willie Wilson.
As of Jan. 1, there were 1.6 million registered voters in Chicago. As of Sunday, 207,940 voters had cast advance ballots.
In the 2022 primary election, 49% of Chicago voters cast their ballots before Election Day. Mail-in ballots can arrive as late as March 14 and be counted so long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
Election officials have said the number of mail ballots is up sharply from the last mayor's race, in 2019, which could delay results. In the 2022 general election, the city counted 12% of votes after Election Day.
Crime takes the lead
For years, Republicans have sought to win over voters by depicting Democratic-led cities as lawless centers of violence that need tough-on-crime policies. In Chicago, some of the Democrats running for mayor have deployed the same strategy as they debated how to make the city safer.
Even Lightfoot has used language right out of the GOP playbook, saying a top rival in her reelection bid wants to defund the police.
The increased attention on public safety follows a spike in crime rates in many communities that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. High-profile incidents of police misconduct drew more scrutiny of policing, and there has been disagreement even among Democrats about so-called progressive public safety policies such as ending cash bail or providing safe injection sites for drug users.
Jaime DomÃnguez, a political science professor at Northwestern University, said it's the first time in 20 years that he's seen public safety be "front and center" in a Chicago mayoral election.
The difference, he said, is that crime is no longer largely isolated to some predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. As more crime is occurring in other parts of the highly segregated city, including downtown and other areas frequented by tourists, public safety is also top of mind for white voters.
"Historically, it was primarily a pocketed matter. It was still pernicious and candidates spoke to it, but it didn't really affect areas where you see crime occurring now," Dominguez said. "That has been blown up. It's just, it's everywhere."
Chicago has a higher per capita homicide rate than New York or Los Angeles, but it's lower than other Midwestern cities, such as St. Louis and Detroit. Still, the number of homicides in Chicago hit a 25-year high in 2021 with 797, according to the Chicago Police Department.
That number decreased last year but is still higher than when Lightfoot took office in 2019. Other crimes, such as carjackings and robberies, have increased in recent years.
Candidates' rhetoric
As she fights to land a spot in the April runoff, Lightfoot has taken on opponents she sees as a threat - among them Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson. In a recent ad, Lightfoot accuses Johnson of wanting to defund police, using video of him speaking on a local radio program in 2020. During the interview, Johnson said reducing the amount of money spent on policing isn't a slogan but "an actual real political goal."
His statements came after the protests across the United States over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd. Johnson also sponsored a nonbinding resolution, passed by the county board, that said money should be redirected from policing and incarceration and into social services.
Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, says he wants to invest more in areas such as mental health treatment. In a statement responding to Lightfoot, his campaign said that doesn't mean cuts to the police department. Johnson also notes that Chicago still has a violence problem even though the police budget grows every year.
All of Lightfoot's opponents want to fire the police superintendent she hired, saying that the former Dallas police chief has been ineffective and that hiring an outsider hurt morale. Lightfoot has defended the superintendent, David Brown, and says that while the city faced never-before-seen challenges such as the pandemic, their strategies are working and some crimes are falling.
Vallas, an adviser to the Fraternal Order of Police during the union's contract negotiations with Lightfoot's administration, says that if he becomes mayor, he would promote a new leadership team from within the department. Vallas says he would welcome back hundreds of officers who have retired or gone elsewhere out of frustration with Lightfoot.
He also wants to return to a community policing strategy, with dedicated officers assigned to patrol each of the city's nearly 300 police beats.
Wilson has doubled down on his comment that suspects in violent crimes should be hunted down like rabbits. Wilson says he lost a son to gun violence, and he believes police officers are being prevented from doing their jobs.