LIGHTFOOT CANCELED

 

                      By Florida Bill 

                  With the counting over in Chicago's mayoral primary, I confess to feeling elated that Lori Lightfoot, the city's first black, gay, female chief executive, is out after a four-year term. Using idioms so dear to the progressive, white-hating crowd to whom she played her "woke" violin, she has been "canceled."

                       The diminutive, 60-year-old mayor who was often pictured under a big cowboy hat and wrinkled clothes, was known locally and nationally for her disdain for white newsmen, and for white skinned citizens in general. She always looked the other way as shootings, killings, carjackings, gang violence and any other kind of violent crime you can imagine spiraled upward under her watch, more concerned with racial nonsense and the denigrating of hard working policemen trying to do their jobs. Frequently, Chicago's outrageous weekend shooting totals made headlines all over the country.

                        Now an octogenarian, I was, for most of my working years, a newspaper reporter for the Chicago Tribune and later was an attorney representing clients. I was a Chicagoan who saw the city as the greatest in the world and the conservative Tribune  as the "World's Greatest Newspaper," a description once carried on the masthead of the paper--which incidentally, is no longer conservative, but still did not endorse Lightfoot.  With this city's proud history in mind, Lightfoot is and was a disaster as mayor, and her exit is good news for me and based upon the vote against her, a satisfying day for the citizens of Chicago.  

                         Lightfoot has certainly claimed the title of the mayor with the dirtiest mouth.  At one meeting with park district lawyers,  Lightfoot lashed out at district attorneys and Italian lawyers who  had been critical of her for denigrating Christopher Columbus as a racist, and the statues in his honor. She accused the attorneys of stroking their private parts, and she used all the words for genitals normally heard in the barnyard or in the verbiage of porn movies, asserting that "my ....." is the biggest around. . 

                           There were nine candidates running in the February 28 primary.  After counting, Paul Valas, the white-skinned former schools CEO, received 34 per cent of the votes cast, and Brandon Johnson, a cook county commissioner, won 20 percent of the ballots.  The incumbent Lightfoot received 17 percent.  The rally eliminated Lightfoot from a second term, and Valas and Johnson, as the top vote getters in the field of nine candidates,  will face off in a  special election for mayor on April 4. 

                            Lightfoot became the first elected Chicago mayor to be denied reelection to a second four years since Jane Byrne was ousted in a Democratic primary in 1983 after her four year term in office. She was succeeded by Harold Washington, a Black U.S. Congressman, who died in office in 1987. Richard M. Daley followed Washington, and he served until 2011 when Rahm Emanuel was elected and served two terms as the city's chief executive.  Lightfoot replaced Emanuel in 2019.  

                           Reportedly, most aldermen on the 50-member city council declined a vote for Lightfoot because of her mismanagement and prejudicial policies and rulings detrimental to  policemen.  The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) had endorsed Valas for the job and had voted a "no confidence" resolution against Lightfoot and her Police Superintendent David Brown, appointed in 2020..

                          Alderman Sophia King who had eagerly supported Lightfoot when she was elected mayor in 2019, declined to support her for reelection, noting her incompetence and inability to deal with crime problems.  Alderman Raymond Lopez, a Democratic member of the Chicago city council, asserted that Lightfoot was "incompetent" as mayor and draws the race card in the face of challenges to her often loony plans. 

                          Lightfoot who has a wife and an adopted daughter, had promised to focus on burgeoning crime and gang violence when she ran for mayor in 2019, and she won overwhelmingly in a run-off election against Toni Preckwinkle,  President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.  The progressive Lightfoot had been a federal prosecutor and had served as President of the Chicago Police Board and as Chairman of the Police Accountability Task Force.  

                            In the early days after taking office, she announced that there were too many white reporters in the city hall press corps and to fix that she said that she would only allow one-on-one interviews with reporters "of color."  Her recalcitrance and abhorrence of white-skinned newsmen in the Chicago City Hall became known nationally. One former Democratic congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, called for her resignation, and implored President Biden and Vice President Harris to join her in pushing for Lightfoot's exit. Tucker Carlson of Fox News described her as a "lunatic and a racist" who should not serve in  a public office.  

                               In another episode displaying her racial animus, she engineered the payment of $2.9 million dollars for a black woman whose home had been mistakenly targeted by police as the residence of a drug dealer.  Police obtained a legal warrant and stormed the residence and encountered the woman resident naked and preparing for bed.  She was without clothes for an estimated six seconds before she was given a blanket by a policemen.  Police and city lawyers apologized and recommended that the woman be given $50,000 as compensation for the embarrassment. 

                             But lightfoot arranged for the city council to approve payment of $2.9 million dollars to the 51-year-old woman and she noted that the raiding policemen were white, and the victim was black. Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner complained that the award of nearly $3 million was out of line and that the police were acting pursuant to a warrant and had done nothing wrong.   When  he persisted in resisting the huge award, Lightfoot fired him. 

                              After his discharge, Flessner slammed Lightfoot in an OpEd piece and said her tenure as mayor was a "disaster" for the city.  Pushing the huge settlement, said Flessner, was part of a deal she had made with the National Civil Rights Movement.

                               After the election in 2019, President Trump offered to send in federal officers to help in bringing down the crime and gang shootings on Chicago streets. Lightfoot refused and accused the President of being a "racist."

                               After the recent vote ending the Lightfoot years on the fifth floor of the City Hall in the Chicago Loop,   Lightfoot telephoned Vallas and congratulated him.  She later told supporters at a rally that serving as mayor was "her honor of a lifetime......we fought the right fight, and we put the city on a better path."

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