Chicago mayor faces dashed hopes of her backers

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is acknowledging she hasn’t accomplished much of what she hoped when she replaced former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as mayor of the nation’s third-largest city, promising to do the job better

CHICAGO -- Lori Lightfoot had her work cut out for her when she became mayor of Chicago in 2019, running as a progressive Democrat and outsider who would bring big change to City Hall. Among her early challenges: a troubled police department, deep financial problems, entrenched inequality, a teacher strike and a president who liked to pile on via Twitter. Then the job got really difficult. Lightfoot acknowledged this week that she hasn't accomplished much of what she hoped when she replaced former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as mayor of the nation’s third-largest city, promising to do the job better. The pandemic and protests over police violence upended many of those plans, she said, adding she is “unbelievably proud” of what her administration has done. But as she reaches the halfway point of her four-year term on Thursday, she faces an abundance of critics over her performance, and hundreds of people plan to protest near her home. Lightfoot drew new scrutiny this week by announcing that she would do one-on-one interviews about her tenure so far only with journalists of color because of the “overwhelming whiteness and maleness" of city media.