The City Is Up for Grabs

February 26, 2024
Crime, scandals, a powerful union, and her own abrasive personality did in Chicago’s recently deposed mayor, according to this savvy debut analysis. Chicago Tribune reporter Pratt recaps Lori Lightfoot’s sudden rise to the mayoralty in 2019 as a political newbie running as a progressive, despite her background as a former federal prosecutor. In his telling, her administration was bedeviled by contradictions: her expansive promises to invest in impoverished minority neighborhoods ran up against her conservative budgetary policies, Illinois governor JB Pritzker’s Covid lockdowns clashed with her preference to keep businesses open, and soaring crime and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests provoked her tough-on-crime instincts, which collided with the public’s demands for policing reforms. Though Lightfoot was ultimately stymied by the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, which backed Brandon Johnson, the progressive who beat her in 2023, Pratt paints Lightfoot as her own worst enemy: she screamed at the city’s aldermen, berated her staff, and conducted herself like a tough-talking but not very intimidating mob boss. (“My dick is bigger than yours and the Italians.... I have the biggest dick in Chicago,” Pratt quotes the mayor blustering during a dispute over a Christopher Columbus statue.) The colorful narrative paints a sharp, entertaining panorama of Chicago governance and its evergreen tapestry of corruption and backroom dealing. It’s a clear-eyed portrait of Lightfoot and of the city’s intractable problems.

January 15, 2024
A Chicago Tribune investigative reporter explores how a "political wunderkind" went from being Chicago's next great hope as mayor to a one-term city hall catastrophe. Lori Lightfoot's rise to mayor of Chicago in 2019 was both spectacular and improbable. Before her tenure, the city had been run by a coterie of privileged white men like Richard J. Daley, his son Richard M. Daley, and former Obama chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel. As a Black lesbian federal prosecutor with a reputation for "toughness and using her fighting skills to pound on her rivals," Lightfoot beat out her opponents by brawling with them over ethics and corruption issues that plagued Chicago City Hall. Pratt, who covered Lightfoot for the Tribune from the start of her political career, argues that those same hardball tactics were a large part of what brought about her downfall. Her tenure came at a time when Chicago, like much of the nation, was struggling with political polarization, seething racial tensions, and the Covid-19 pandemic, all of which overwhelmed local concerns such as those pertaining to the city's viability as a global competitor. As difficult as these problems were, however, Lightfoot's unapologetically contentious handling of events--such as the post-George Floyd riots that rocked the city and the massive teacher walkout during the pandemic--cost her the support of her constituents. As labor leader and alderperson Susan Sadlowski Garza, once a Lightfoot ally, observed, "I have never met anybody who has managed to piss off every single person they come in contact with--police, fire, teachers, aldermen, businesses, manufacturing." Pratt's analysis sometimes gets lost in day-to-day details, particularly those surrounding Lightfoot's troubled political relationships, but those who follow Chicago city politics will undoubtedly find the book of interest. Comprehensive reporting that may have limited appeal on the national stage.

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