Former head of city’s police board also becomes first openly LGBT mayor and defeated Toni Preckwinkle, seen as favorite to win

Lori Lightfoot has won a historic landslide victory in Chicago’s mayoral election runoff, becoming the first black woman and first openly gay person to hold the highest office in America’s third largest city.

“Together, we can and will finally put the interests of our people – all of our people – ahead of the interests of a powerful few,” Lightfoot said in her victory speech on Tuesday night, vowing to bring an end to the city’s gun violence, and “break this city’s endless cycle of corruption”.

“Together, we can and will make Chicago a place where your zip code doesn’t determine your destiny,” she said.

Late results showed Lightfoot, 56, who capitalised on her status as an outsider in a city long defined by insider politics, won every one of the city’s 50 wards. The reform candidate defeated Toni Preckwinkle, who was for months seen as the favorite to win, and will succeed the outgoing mayor, Rahm Emanuel, later this spring.

A crowd of supporters who packed the ornate Hilton Chicago Grand Ballroom in downtown on Tuesday evening erupted in raucous cheers as outlets called the election for Lightfoot, less than an hour after polls closed. As the mayor-elect took the stage a little after 9pm local time, supporters – some of whom toted signs bearing her campaign slogan, “Bring in the Light” – chanted Lightfoot’s name.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lori Lightfoot kisses her wife, Amy Eshleman, during the election night party in Chicago on Tuesday evening. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczyński/AFP/Getty Images

“Out there tonight a lot of little girls and boys are watching. They’re watching us, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot told the crowd. “They’re seeing a city reborn.”

Lightfoot has never held elected office, but has served in other roles in the city’s government – most notably as the head of Chicago’s police board and its police accountability taskforce, which was established by Emanuel in 2015 amid outrage over his administration’s handling of the murder of the black teenager Laquan McDonald by a white former police officer, Jason Van Dyke, who was convicted in 2018.

Chicago to elect first black female mayor in historic runoff vote Read more

Lightfoot will take the reins at a difficult time for the city, which continues to face high rates of gun violence, a precarious education system, and huge financial problems, not least a pensions funding crisis.

Some LGBT campaigners in Chicago lamented Lightfoot’s win, arguing that her ties to the police and her opposition to rent control “fall into a legacy of decades-old anti-gay and anti-trans political suppression”.

Charlene Carruthers (@CharleneCac) Do Chicago a favor and save all excited posts and articles about our next mayor being Black lesbian.



You’re not helping. She loves and has worked to protect the very systems that suck resources and harm our communities. #stoplightfoot #LGBT

But at Lightfoot’s election night party, her enthusiastic supporters expressed confidence that the reform candidate would be a step forward for the city.

“I really hope that Lori can be the light for this city,” said Shawanda Johnson, a resident of the city’s Roseland neighborhood who began volunteering for Lightfoot after the February election. “I’m just glad to be part of history.”

The race to replace Emanuel has been contentious, particularly in the weeks since Lightfoot earned the most votes of any candidate in the crowded field in February’s election to force a runoff against Preckwinkle.

Preckwinkle’s prospects, though, were probably hurt by the January indictment of Ed Burke, the city’s longest-serving alderman. Preckwinkle and other top mayoral candidates were associated with Burke, opening the door to Lightfoot, who had made reform of Chicago’s political machine a centerpiece of her campaign.

“[Burke’s arrest] refocused the election,” Dick Simpson, a political science professor and former alderman who endorsed Lightfoot, told the Guardian before the vote. “While Preckwinkle has some reform credentials … she isn’t proposing the same kind of reform platform as Lightfoot.”

The police board increased its disciplinary action against problematic officers under her leadership, and her panel criticized both Emanuel and Chicago police over the McDonald killing. But her association with law enforcement, with which many in this racially and economically divided city have a fraught relationship, has been viewed with skepticism by critics and used against her by political opponents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Chicago mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle, right, greets a commuter during her final campaign stop at the Thompson Center in Chicago on Tuesday. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczyński/AFP/Getty Images

“The resounding voice [among activists] has been that they don’t necessarily feel comfortable or safe going into a city where Lori Lightfoot sits on the fifth floor [of City Hall],” said Chance the Rapper, the celebrated musician whose father ran Preckwinkle’s campaign, in his endorsement of Preckwinkle, the Cook county board president, last month.

Still, Lightfoot went into election day on Tuesday with a comfortable lead in polls and won in a resounding victory, defeating Preckwinkle by nearly 50 percentage points.

Voter turnout appeared low in the runoff, as it was in the initial election in February.

In her concession speech, Preckwinkle said: “This may not be the outcome we wanted, but while I may be disappointed, I am not disheartened.” She told supporters that she would continue to serve as Cook county board president, calling it “a historic night”.

Lightfoot, meanwhile, said of her opponent: “Our differences are nothing compared with what we can achieve together,” adding: “I know we will work together for the city that we both love.”

Both candidates agreed to honor the Rev Jesse Jackson’s calls for a post-election press conference focused on unity, and were expected to meet Chicago’s commuters on Tuesday.

In electing Lightfoot, Chicago will become the largest US city to be led by a black female mayor. Harold Washington, who was elected in 1983, and Eugene Sawyer, who was appointed after Washington died in office in 1987, are the only two African Americans to have served as mayor of the city. Jane Byrne is the only woman to have ever served in the role.