All the wakery, in the whole world, cannot save the progressive politician who fails to keep their citizens safe.
It’s a lesson Lori Lightfoot learned the hard way.
The question is: who is next?
If you don’t know Lori, she’s the current and soon-to-be former mayor of Chicago, who was unceremoniously rejected by the city’s voters on Tuesday night.
In a crowded field, Lightfoot finished third. The two best voters go to a second round in April, but unfortunately the incumbent mayor is not among them.
She only earned 17% of the vote. It’s a dramatic political faceplant. And – oh boy – she deserved it.
Nearly four years ago, Lightfoot’s election was rightly celebrated by many. She was only the second woman and the first openly gay black woman to ever serve as mayor of the Windy City.
What does Lightfoot himself have to say?
Nothing.
She blames the voters.
After her concession speech, a reporter asked Lightfoot if she had been treated unfairly. “I’m a black woman in America,” she replied. ‘Naturally.’
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
While identity politics can help you get in, it won’t necessarily help you get the job done.
Leading up to the election, Lightfoot told the New Yorker, “I’m a black woman — let’s not forget that. Frankly, certain people don’t support us in leadership roles.’
That’s weird. How were you chosen the first time?
If you don’t know Lori, she’s the current and soon-to-be former mayor of Chicago, who was unceremoniously rejected by the city’s voters on Tuesday night.
In a crowded field, Lightfoot finished third. The two best voters go to a second round in April, but unfortunately the incumbent mayor is not among them.
Was the racist, sexist pile against you in 2019 when you won 73% of the vote and carried all 50 of the city’s wards?
Excuse me, Lori. The identity politics of a few years ago don’t carry the same weight in a country still clawing its way out of the COVID pandemic, seeing a coming recession, grappling with crime and drug epidemics, and feeling an increasingly aggressive Chinese communist threat breathing. neck.
Chicagoans wanted results and you couldn’t deliver them.
In her inaugural address, Lightfoot vowed to end the city’s “epidemic of gun violence, which is destroying families, shattering communities (and) holding children hostage in their own homes out of fear.”
As the end of her short tenure approaches, the town has spiraled out of control. Above all, crime and violence rage.
In 2021, Chicago set a 25-year homicide record with over 800 homicides. While the homicide rate fell between 2021 and 2022, it remained almost 40% higher than in 2019.
This year, from January 1 to mid-February, overall crime in the city was up 58% over the same period in 2022. That includes criminal assaults at 23%, robberies at 33%, and robberies at 23%. And for some reason, carjackings are now as much a Chicago specialty as deep-dish pizzas.
The chaos caused high-profile companies, whose taxes fill the city’s coffers, to flee the state. The Citadel hedge fund left town for—you guessed it—Miami.
Before the election, polls showed a whopping 61% of voters said they disapproved of the work they were doing and 71% said the city was “on the wrong track.”
And in what must be one of the most desperate moves in modern American politics, the Lightfoot campaign sought to recruit schoolchildren to volunteer for its campaign in exchange for college credit. They got caught – and walked back with it lamely.
Finally, Lightfoot himself was incredibly racially divided.
She accused her white opponent, a moderate Democrat, of “giving a voice and a platform to people who hate anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.”
His alleged offense? He promised to take the city back from criminals.
In fact, it was Lightfoot who fanned the flames of racial tension in the wake of the George Floyd murder.
On the occasion of her two-year anniversary as mayor, Lightfoot deigned to give interviews only to journalists of color.
“It’s a disgrace that in 2021 the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly white in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American,” she tweeted at the time.
Reporters of all races largely rejected this patently racist and frankly bizarre policy. Fortunately, it has not been adopted in a serious way.
But for all her pledges, virtue-signaling, and wakefulness, how did people of color live under Lightfoot?
Horrible.
Take the education issue.
90% of Chicago Public School students come from minority families. But under Lightfoot, a historic teachers’ strike kept kids out of classes for a week — and that’s on top of the city’s lengthy COVID shutdowns.
She accused her white opponent, a moderate Democrat (above), of “giving a voice and platform to people who hate anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.” (Pictured above) Chicago mayoral candidate and former CEO of Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas on February 28, 2023 in Chicago
Instead of taking responsibility and admitting failure, Lightfoot plays the sore loser and undermines factual claims of bigotry. Chicago already has a Jussie Smollett. They don’t need anyone else.
A new study of 2022 data from the Illinois Department of Education revealed that not a single student was proficient in math or reading in 55 public schools in Chicago.
That’s horrible.
In her campaign’s closing message to her disillusioned former South Side supporters, a largely minority in Chicago, she told them that if they didn’t vote for her, “stay home.” Then don’t vote.’
How cynical that she now blames sexism and racism for her loss?
Let me state clearly that it is important to break down barriers and pursue greater diversity, but America is still a meritocracy.
If you can’t deliver the goods, you’re out! We are tired of lazy identity politics.
Instead of taking responsibility and admitting failure, Lightfoot plays the sore loser and undermines factual claims of bigotry.
Chicago already has a Jussie Smollett. They don’t need anyone else.
It’s only fitting that Lightfoot end her mayoralty with a new record.
She is only the third Chicago mayor to lose reelection since Prohibition. That’s a statistic I can get behind.