Lori Lightfoot
Lori Elaine Lightfoot is an American politician and attorney who was the 56th mayor of Chicago from 2019 until 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first black woman and first LGBTQ person to serve as mayor of Chicago. Lightfoot was the second woman and the third black person overall to hold the office. She was also the second openly lesbian woman to serve as mayor of one of the ten most populous cities in the United States.
Graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, Lightfoot first worked as an attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and, later, as a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown. She also held positions in Chicago government prior to serving as mayor. Appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Lightfoot was the president of the Chicago Police Board and chair of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force. In these roles, she was tasked with helping oversee misconduct cases in the Chicago Police Department.
Lightfoot ran successfully for mayor of Chicago in 2019. Advancing to the runoff, she defeated Toni Preckwinkle in a landslide, winning in all 50 of the city's wards. As mayor, Lightfoot increased Chicago's minimum wage, worked to build affordable housing, and sought to revitalize blighted areas of the city. However, her tenure was also marked by controversy and low public approval. She notably faced criticism over Chicago's rising crime rates and her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lightfoot ran for reelection in 2023, but failed to qualify for the runoff. She became the first Chicago mayor to lose reelection in 40 years.
Early life and education
Lightfoot was born in Massillon, Ohio, the youngest of four children. Her mother, Ann Lightfoot, was a nighttime healthcare aide and school board member, and her father, Elijah Lightfoot, was a local factory worker and janitor. She grew up in a primarily white neighborhood on the west side of the city.Lightfoot is a graduate of Washington High School in Massillon, where she was a trumpet player in the school band; sang alto in the choir; played basketball, volleyball, and softball; edited the yearbook; and was a member of the Pep Club. She was elected high school class president three times. When she ran for high school class president, Lightfoot's campaign slogan was "Get on the right foot with Lightfoot". In recounting the start of her interest in political organizing, she has often mentioned a high school boycott she organized protesting the quality of school lunches.
Lightfoot received her Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Michigan in 1984, graduating with honors. She pursued seven different types of employment to pay for her education, including working as a resident assistant and as a cook for the school's football team. She also held factory jobs at home during summers to help pay for her education. While Lightfoot was an undergraduate, her older brother, Brian Lightfoot, was arrested in connection with a bank robbery and the shooting of a security guard.
Lightfoot held positions working for Congress members Ralph Regula and Barbara Mikulski before deciding to attend law school. She has said she chose to attend law school not because of her brother's legal troubles, but because she wanted a job that offered financial independence. She matriculated at the University of Chicago Law School, where she was awarded a full scholarship. As president of the University of Chicago Law School's student body, she led a successful movement to ban a law firm from campus after the firm sent a recruiter who made racist and sexist remarks towards a student. Lightfoot quarterbacked an intramural flag football team while at Chicago Law School. Lightfoot also served as a clerk for Justice Charles Levin of the Michigan Supreme Court. She graduated from the University of Chicago with her J.D. degree in 1989.
Career
Assistant U.S. Attorney (1996–2002)
After law school, Lightfoot became a practicing attorney at the Mayer Brown law firm, serving a wide cross-section of clients. Lightfoot first entered the public sector as Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. During her mayoral campaign, Lightfoot cited several reasons for entering public service, including a desire to represent the African-American community, a sense of injustice based on the murder of a family member by a Ku Klux Klan member in the 1920s, and struggles with the law encountered by her older brother, who was charged with possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute.While working as a federal prosecutor, Lightfoot helped to prosecute those accused of federal crimes, including drug crimes. She assisted with Operation Silver Shovel, an FBI investigation into Chicago corruption. She helped to convict alderman Virgil Jones. In 1999, Lightfoot was issued a warning for misconduct by judge Richard Posner in a case in which she was found by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to have misled a United States Circuit Judge regarding a suspect's whereabouts, making it impossible for the judge to stay the suspect's extradition to Norway. Lightfoot and the Justice Department disputed this characterization of her actions.
Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards (2002–04)
In 2002, Lightfoot was appointed chief administrator of the Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards, a now-defunct governmental police oversight group, by Police Superintendent Terry Hillard. She held the position for two years. In the position, she was in charge of investigating possible cases of police misconduct, including police shootings of civilians. However, a Chicago Tribune report found that the Office of Professional Standards' investigations often lacked thoroughness. Lightfoot says her recommendations for disciplinary action were often rejected by the police department.In one notable case, Lightfoot went against Police Department orthodoxy by recommending the firing of officer Alvin Weems, who shot and killed an unarmed man, Michael Pleasance. Weems was initially believed to have accidentally shot Pleasance, but after video evidence contradicting the initial claims was revealed, even Weems himself expressed the view that the shooting was unjustified. Weems was not fired by the Chicago Police Department, but the city was eventually forced to pay a settlement to the Pleasance family. Weems later committed suicide.
In another controversial case where officer Phyllis Clinkscales shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Robert Washington, the Chicago Tribune reported that Lightfoot determined that the shooting was justified. In doing so, the Tribune said she reversed the order of her predecessor, who had called for Clinkscales's firing. Clinkscales's account of the events of the shooting had been found to contain untrue statements in an investigation. Lightfoot disputes this account of Clinkscales's case, saying that the police superintendent at the time was responsible for declining Lightfoot's predecessor's finding that the shooting was unjustified. Lightfoot said her action on the case was to push for a 30-day suspension for Clinkscales, which she implied was the most that was possible given the circumstances.
Other roles in Chicago city government (2004–05)
Lightfoot then moved on to work in the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications. She was later hired by Mayor Richard M. Daley as deputy chief of the Chicago Department of Procurement Services. There, she and her boss, Mary Dempsey, investigated Chicago corruption, drawing Mayor Daley's ire in the process. Lightfoot and Dempsey's investigations included probes of then-Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich's associate Tony Rezko and prominent Daley donor Elzie Higginbottom. Lightfoot worked at the Department of Procurement Services for a few months, subsequently returning to Mayer Brown. Lightfoot has suggested that she left the Department of Procurement Services because of dismay at corruption in City Hall.Private practice
As an attorney at Mayer Brown, Lightfoot represented Republicans in two cases contesting supposed Democratic gerrymandering. At Mayer Brown, she also defended Chicago police officer Paul Powers against charges of physical assault. In 2019, after facing criticism over defending Powers, Lightfoot cited video evidence in favor of her former client's innocence.Lightfoot was briefly hired by the city of Chicago to defend the city against charges brought by the family of a mentally ill woman, Christina Eilman, who was brought into custody by Chicago police after suffering a mental breakdown at Midway Airport. Eilman suffered sexual assault and a seven-story fall after being released by police into the dangerous Englewood neighborhood. Eilman's family reached a $22.5 million settlement with the city.
Lightfoot has also served on the boards of the Illinois chapters of NARAL and the ACLU. She has served as external counsel for Bank of America. In 2013, Lightfoot was a finalist for the position of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, but the job went to Zachary T. Fardon.
Chicago Police Board and Task Force (2015–18)
Lightfoot returned to the public sector in 2015, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to replace 19-year incumbent Demetrius Carney as president of the Chicago Police Board. The board's main responsibility is to make recommendations for or against disciplinary action on certain disputed cases of police misconduct. Under Lightfoot's leadership, the board became more punitive, firing officers in 72% of its cases. In the wake of the controversy over the murder of Laquan McDonald, Emanuel also appointed Lightfoot as chair of a special Police Accountability Task Force. In 2016, the Task Force, led by Lightfoot, filed a report critical of the Chicago Police Department's practices. She specifically criticized the police union's "code of silence". The anti-police brutality activist organization Black Youth Project 100's Chicago chapter released a statement denouncing Lightfoot and the board and task force for a "lack of accountability".In 2017, Emanuel re-appointed Lightfoot to a second term as president of the Police Board. The decision came after Lightfoot and Emanuel had publicly come into conflict, particularly over Emanuel's attempts to reach a police reform deal with Trump Administration Justice Department officials that would avoid a consent decree and oversight from a federal judge. Lightfoot called Emanuel's approach "fundamentally flawed". At the time, there was already speculation that Lightfoot was planning a run for mayor of Chicago in 2019, though she denied the rumors. Lightfoot resigned from the Police Board in May 2018, just before announcing her mayoral campaign.