So Chicago gets to choose between, barring a wild swing from the mail-in ballots, Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle. No Republican even bothered running, this is a single-party city. The only candidate I even remotely liked, Garry McCarthy, got trounced, receiving 2.7% of the vote (13,000ish votes).
So, not only will the first black woman become mayor of Chicago, but this may be the first contest between two candidates with first names that are 4 letters long ending in ‘i’.
Of course, I don’t live in the city limits, so I don’t really have a horse in this race. That said, I can’t figure out who I want to win.
On the one hand, as a victim of her tenure as President of the Cook County Board, I want Preckwinkle to lose. Badly. Her plan to ‘fix’ things is to tax them to death, then never use the revenue to fix things. The illegally implemented soda tax went to fatten a Teamster’s Union contract, not fix things.
On the other hand, if she wins, she is Chicago’s problem, not Cook County’s. Admittedly, the deeply corrupt Cook County Democratic Party still runs the county, so things won’t get better exactly. This must be how Arkansas felt about Clinton during the 1992 election.
I was pondering this last night, when Preckwinkle came on the news to deliver her speech. The content of her speech was mean, needlessly. She was attacking Lori Lightfoot out of the gate, when she could have chosen to be a gracious sort-of-winner (Chicago requires a majority to win, so there is going to be a run-off on April 2nd). But she didn’t. Preckwinkle went low. She seemed pissed off that she wasn’t cleanly coronated, which suggests she is a moron, since a clean win in a 14-candidate field, which included a Daley, wasn’t even a possibility. Preckwinkle just seemed like the proverbial ‘mean girl’. She even poached Trump, pledging to “make Chicago great”.
Lori Lightfoot’s speech was much more humble – thanking people (not just dropping names, thanking volunteers) for nearly 5 minutes of a 12 minute speech, one that attacked the machine, but not her opponent. One with personal notes and hope. Plus, her campaign logo is better, with the lighthouse theme. So there’s that.
So, even though it leaves an angry, and (based on the response to the soda tax thing) likely vengeful Preckwinkle with her death grip on the county, I have to hope that Lightfoot is elected Mayor of Chicago. If only to deny it to Preckwinkle.
And yes, no matter who wins, it is likely Chicago loses. I just think they might lose less under Lightfoot.