“You’ve got to win the Midwest,” Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot said. “We are the template for the rest of the country in terms of Democratic working-class values.” | Scott Olson/Getty Images 2020 elections Chicago mayor-elect: Biden still has to answer for Anita Hill Lightfoot says 2020 candidates will ignore the Midwest at their peril.

CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot has something to tell Joe Biden: He needs to atone for his treatment of Anita Hill 28 years ago.

The whole affair stings for Lightfoot, who is poised to become the first black woman to lead Chicago and had recently graduated from law school when the 1991 confirmation hearings were going on. As she vaults to the national political stage later this month, taking the reins from Rahm Emanuel after winning a tight race to lead the country’s third-largest city, Lightfoot says Biden has more to do.


“I don’t think Anita Hill needs his apology. But give an account of your behavior with a lot of hindsight,” Lightfoot, in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with POLITICO Thursday, said of the former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate, who chaired Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court hearings. “I don’t know that he’s successfully done that yet.”

Biden has been repeatedly criticized for how Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University, was treated during those hearings and recently sought to take "responsibility," saying Hill was "abused through the hearing." But Lightfoot's concern about how things unfolded nearly 30 years ago shows how potent the issue remains among some high-level Democratic officials and resonates after the rise of the #MeToo movement.

“It was powerful and riveting. I had never seen anything like that before in my life,” Lightfoot recalled. “I remember her testimony as being kind of halting and meek at the time… She had no interest whatsoever in being public. Her body language said ‘I feel completely uncomfortable. I don’t want to be here. But I must tell the truth.’”

Lightfoot said she isn’t ready to pin herself to any of the Democrats vying for to replace President Donald Trump.

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A few of them — Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren — called Lightfoot to congratulate on her historic win, but none of the presidential candidates have yet to ask her for an endorsement, she said. Lightfoot says she wouldn’t give one anyway. Still, she has plenty of advice and isn’t thrilled with the liberal lurch of the Democratic bench where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an avowed democratic socialist running for the presidency again, is shaping the debate.

“It’s not enough to be anti-Trump,” Lightfoot said, speaking in her temporary offices near the Chicago River.

“There’s significant movement as far to the left in our party as far as you can go, where people are trying to out-Bernie Bernie,” Lightfoot said. “I think in order to win, you have to win hearts and minds of people who aren’t as worried about social issues but about the economic issues.”

Nearly two dozen people are trying to elbow their way into the Democratic presidential nomination, and the Chicago Democrat knows a little something about competing in a big field. She was a virtual unknown among 14 candidates to lead the Windy City before emerging victorious in a runoff last month where she bested an entrenched politician, winning all of the city’s 50 wards. Lightfoot, who will also be the first openly gay person to be Chicago mayor, takes the oath on May 20.

“You’ve got to win the Midwest,” Lightfoot, an Ohio native, said of the presidential contenders. “We are the template for the rest of the country in terms of Democratic working-class values.”

Lightfoot said she was startled by the lack of attention the region received from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, when the frontrunner lost Michigan to Trump, and argued that her party “can’t leave working class individuals behind and think we’re going to win, because we won’t.”

“The challenge is coming up with positive solutions that really resonate and move people’s lives for the better,” she said.

Lightfoot’s more immediate concern with Washington is walking a tightrope with the White House, and she made it clear how far apart she is from Trump.

“My values are not his values on anything,” she said, even while noting that she respects the office of the president regardless of who occupies the position.

But Lightfoot says she has an “obligation” to work with the White House to get Chicago’s “fair share of resources” from the federal government. In fact, she plans to visit Washington next week to discuss opportunities for Chicago.

And Trump has taken an interest in Chicago for years. An overwhelming negative one. The president has tweeted repeatedly about gun violence in Chicago, saying, “If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible ‘carnage’… I will send in the Feds!” and “Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help.”

Lightfoot said she plans to be forthright “to disabuse” Trump of his dark impressions of Chicago on everything from his take on crime to “sanctuary city” status.