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      Chicago Police Superintendent Steps Down After Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Defeat

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      David O. Brown, the superintendent, said he had accepted a job as chief operating officer of a personal injury law firm in Texas.CHICAGO — David O. Brown, the embattled superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, announced his resignation on Wednesday, on the heels of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s defeat in a mayoral race that was dominated by voter concerns about public safety.Superintendent Brown’s resignation will take effect on March 16.After Ms. Lightfoot lost her bid for a second term in office on Tuesday, the swift departure of her handpicked police superintendent was all but assured. Both of the mayoral candidates who advanced to an April 4 runoff, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, had said that they intended to fire Mr. Brown, if elected.In a statement, Mr. Brown said that he had accepted a job as chief operating officer of a personal injury law firm in Texas.“It has been an honor and a privilege to work alongside the brave men and women of the Chicago Police Department,” he said. “I will continue to pray that all officers return home to their families safe at the end of their shift. May the good Lord bless the city of Chicago and the men and women who serve and protect this great city.”Ms. Lightfoot praised the superintendent for his department’s work in recovering illegal guns and reducing violent crime and for recruiting 950 new hires to the department in 2022. Eric Carter, the first deputy superintendent, will serve as interim superintendent until a new mayor is sworn into office in May, Ms. Lightfoot said.Superintendent Brown, a former chief of the Dallas Police Department, was hired by Ms. Lightfoot to lead Chicago’s force in April 2020. At the time, he was hailed as a reformer who had increased transparency and diversity in the department and instituted de-escalation training for officers.He gained national prominence for leading the Dallas department during a tragedy that shocked the country: In 2016, a Black man, intent on killing white officers, fatally shot five police officers in downtown Dallas while the country was reeling from the deaths of two Black men at the hands of the police in Louisiana and Minnesota.Asked about how to bridge the gap between the two brotherhoods — Black and blue — he belongs to, Superintendent Brown said at a news conference at the time, “I’ve been Black a long time, so it’s not much of a bridge for me.”When Mr. Brown arrived in Chicago, the coronavirus pandemic had just begun, and a crime wave that would sweep across the nation took hold in the city.But he soon faced scathing criticism for his handling of protests, looting and civil unrest in Chicago during the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis.Joseph Ferguson, then the city’s inspector general, issued a report in 2021 detailing failures in Superintendent Brown’s response and faulting city officials for “poor coordination, inconsistency and confusion” that left the police “outflanked, underequipped and unprepared to respond to the scale of the protests and unrest with which they were met in the downtown area and across Chicago’s neighborhoods.”Under Superintendent Brown, homicides in Chicago soared to generational highs. He also endured complaints from rank-and-file officers, who frequently said they were exhausted and struggling with understaffing, and the pace of retirements accelerated in the last several years.The Rev. Ira Acree, a pastor in a neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago that has been hit hard by gun violence, said that he saw Mr. Brown as a competent police official.“I do, however, think that he was overmatched,” he said, noting that Mr. Brown had begun his job just as the pandemic and the national crime surge hit. “He did not have the degree of familiarity that is needed to inspire a police department that already had low morale.”Ms. Lightfoot said during her campaign that she intended to keep Superintendent Brown in place if she were re-elected, but there were signs that he was leaving, whether the mayor was re-elected or not: The Chicago Sun-Times reported last month that Mr. Brown would have reached the department’s mandatory retirement age of 63 in October. More

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      The Spectacular Fall of Lori Lightfoot

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      It was a stunning rebuke. On Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, the first Black woman and first openly L.G.B.T.Q. person to lead the city, failed to advance to a runoff, earning just 17 percent of the vote and becoming the first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election bid.Four days before the election, I interviewed Lightfoot in her Chicago office. The space, with its soaring ceiling, was a clash of aesthetics, like many government buildings, displaying a kind of prudent grandeur, evoking the gravitas of the office without signaling excess, much like Lightfoot herself, who settled her small frame, dressed in a smart gray suit, into a large chair.During our nearly hourlong interview, she choked up and fought back tears when discussing the sacrifices her parents had made for her and her siblings. A smile lit her face when she talked about all the memes that had made her a folk hero in the early days of her term, and she puffed up with pride when discussing her proudest moments as mayor, including how she and her team had dealt with the Covid-19 crisis.But those weren’t the reasons I’d trekked to the frigid city on the lake. I’d come because Lightfoot belongs to a group of recently elected Black mayors of major American cities, including Eric Adams in New York, Sylvester Turner in Houston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles.In those cities, Black people are outnumbered by other nonwhite groups, and in New York City and Chicago their ranks are dwindling.Each of these four mayors was elected or re-elected around the height of two seismic cultural phenomena — Black Lives Matter and the pandemic. Of the four, Lightfoot would be one of the first to face voters and test the fallout. (Turner is term-limited and can’t run again.)It clearly did not go well.On one level, the results of Tuesday’s election speak to how potent the issue of crime can be and how it can be used as a scare tactic. Lightfoot said that it was absolutely used as a political tool in her race: “You’ve got people who are using it as a cudgel against me every single day. You’ve got the only white candidate in the race who’s acting like he’s going to be a great white savior on public safety.”That white candidate is Paul Vallas, who finished at the top of the crowded field on Tuesday with 34 percent of the vote. Vallas had run a tough-on-crime, law-and-order campaign in which he told one crowd that his “whole campaign is about taking back our city, pure and simple.”Lightfoot called the remark “the ultimate dog whistle.”In our interview, she was brutal in her racial assessment of Vallas: “He is giving voice and platform to people who are hateful of anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.” She is also surprisingly candid about how race operates in the city itself: “Chicago is a deeply divided and segregated city.”It is that division, in her view, fomented by candidates who see politics in the city as a zero-sum game, that provided Vallas with an opening to win over the city’s white citizens. As she put it, “People who are not used to feeling the touch of violence, particularly people on the North Side of our city, they are buying what he’s selling.”Indeed, Vallas won many of the wards in the northern part of the city, while Lightfoot won most of the wards on the largely Black South Side.But two things can be true simultaneously: There can be legitimate concerns about rising crime, and crime can be used as a political wedge issue, particularly against elected officials of color, which has happened often.In this moment, when the country has still not come to grips with the wide-ranging societal trauma that the pandemic exacerbated and unleashed, mayors are being held responsible for that crime. If all politics is local, crime and safety are the most local. And when the perception of crime collides with ingrained societal concepts of race and gender, politicians, particularly Black women, can pay the price.In 2021, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta chose not to seek re-election, becoming the city’s first Black mayor to serve only a single term, after wrestling with what she called the “Covid crime wave.” Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans is facing a possible recall, largely over the issue of crime in her city, and organizers said this week that they have gathered enough signatures to force a recall vote.Even in cities where Black mayors aren’t likely to be removed from office, their opponents are searching for ways to limit their power, using criminal justice as justification.The Mississippi House recently passed a bill that would create a separate court system and an expanded police force in the city of Jackson, one of the Blackest cities in America. The new district “would incorporate all of the city’s significantly populated white-majority neighborhoods,” as an analysis by The Guardian pointed out. Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said the plan reminded him of apartheid.Crime often comes in waves, but a question lingers about how people, even liberals, respond when a crest arrives under Black leadership: Are Black mayors too quickly and easily blamed for rising crime, and if so, why? Because of an unwillingness to crack down on criminals or because of a more insidious, latent belief in ineffectual Black leadership in times of crisis?Lightfoot told me she understood that as a woman and as a person of color, “I’m always going to be viewed through a different lens, that the things I do and say, that the toughness that I exhibit, is viewed as divisive, that I’m the mean mayor, that I can’t collaborate with anyone.”Even so, she conceded, “If you feel like your life has been challenged because of the public safety issues coming to your doorstep, it doesn’t matter what the numbers are — you need to feel safe.”But feelings on issues of politics, crime and race also tap into our biases, both conscious and subconscious. In that vein, Lightfoot may be a harbinger, or at least a warning, for the other big-city Black mayors: As the Covid crime wave wears on, will their mostly non-Black citizens feel that their safety is being prioritized and secured under Black leadership?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Chicago Votes for Change

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      After a crime surge, Chicago voters have ousted their current mayor.Chicago’s mayor race has joined the growing list of evidence that Americans are unhappy about crime.Lori Lightfoot, the incumbent, yesterday became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election campaign. Lightfoot — a progressive in her first term — finished third in the initial stage of this year’s campaign, in which nine candidates were trying to qualify for a runoff in April. Lightfoot received only 17 percent of the vote, according to the latest count.The runoff will be between Paul Vallas, a former head of the city’s school system who ran on a tough-on-crime message, and Brandon Johnson, a progressive county commissioner who previously worked as a teacher and union organizer. Vallas finished with 34 percent of the vote and Johnson finished second with 20 percent.Brandon Johnson talking to supporters yesterday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesCrime in Chicago has surged since the pandemic began, with the number of major crimes 33 percent higher last year than in 2019. The murder rate has fallen from its 2021 peak but only modestly, and robberies and car thefts have kept rising recently. In a recent poll, nearly two-thirds of Chicago residents said that they felt unsafe.“Chicagoans are genuinely frustrated by the state of the city, and crime is vastly overshadowing any other concerns,” Julie Bosman, The Times’s Chicago bureau chief, told me. “In a city known for its powerful leaders, it’s unsurprising that a lot of Chicagoans see this as Lightfoot’s failure. Many voters I’ve talked to see this mayoral race as a chance to reset.”New York and Oregon, tooCrime has been a particularly vexing issue for progressive Democrats, both in Chicago and nationally. After police officers in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd in 2020, progressive activists and politicians called for both reforms to reduce police violence and reduced funding for police departments. Many of the proposed reforms — including body cameras and greater accountability for police misbehavior — are popular, but defunding the police is unpopular even among most Democratic voters, polls show.It became more unpopular after crime began to soar during the pandemic. Across 27 cities that publicly report crime data, the murder rate last year was 34 percent higher than it had been in 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.Chart shows 12-month averages. | Source: Council on Criminal JusticeProgressives have struggled to develop a persuasive response. Some have suggested that the crime increase is mostly a right-wing talking point, but the statistics say otherwise. And voters evidently agree with the statistics:In New York City, Eric Adams won the mayor’s race in 2021 by focusing his campaign on crime. In the Democratic primary, he lost only one of the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, the wealthiest.In New York State last year, Republican candidates in the midterms focused on crime and did much better than usual. Democratic candidates often tried to change the subject. “I think those who stated, ‘Don’t talk about crime,’ it was an insult to Black and brown communities where a lot of this crime was playing out,” Adams said after the election. Nancy Pelosi told The Times’s Maureen Dowd that Democrats might have maintained control of the House of Representatives if the party’s candidates in New York had taken crime more seriously.Republicans also fared well last year in Oregon, where the largest city — Portland — has become a symbol of post-pandemic disorder. Between 2019 and 2022, murders nearly tripled, vandalism incidents nearly doubled and car thefts rose 69 percent.The Bass modelKaren Bass, the recently elected mayor of Los Angeles, has developed arguably the most successful progressive message on crime. A former community organizer who spent 12 years in the House of Representatives, Bass defeated a more conservative candidate not by downplaying crime concerns but by talking about them frequently. Bass herself was a burglary victim last year.She has tried to strike a balance by calling for both the hiring of hundreds of additional police officers and tougher punishments for abusive officers. “We must stop crimes in progress and hold people accountable,” she said in her inaugural address. “Let me be so bold as to add that we can prevent crime and community violence by addressing the social, the health and the economic conditions that compromise a safe environment.”The Chicago runoff will become the next test of whether a progressive message on crime can win in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. As was the case in Los Angeles, the more progressive candidate — Johnson — is Black, while the more conservative one — Vallas — is white.In the past, Johnson supported calls to defund the police but he has tried to avoid the subject during the mayoral campaign. He has instead emphasized his plans to build more housing, expand pre-K and increase funding for social services. He is likely to portray Vallas as a conservative who is out of touch with Chicago. The local police union, whose top official is a Donald Trump supporter, has endorsed Vallas.“No matter where you live, no matter what you look like, you deserve to have a better, stronger, safer Chicago,” Johnson said at his election night party last night.As the chief executive of the Chicago schools, Vallas expanded the number of charter schools. As a mayoral candidate, he has focused overwhelmingly on public safety, calling it “a basic human right for Chicagoans,” and promising an expansion of the police force, and described the city as being in disarray. He is likely to emphasize Johnson’s previous support for defunding the police.“We will make Chicago the safest city in America,” Vallas said last night.Related: Read The Times’s coverage of the election, and see the results for all nine candidates.Other politics newsThe Supreme Court’s conservative justices seemed skeptical of President Biden’s plan to forgive student debt.Ron DeSantis will soon visit Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire, another sign that he will run for president.Republicans in Congress questioned military officials on money sent to Ukraine, signaling concerns over future aid.Biden is betting government aid can revitalize semiconductor production in the U.S. and thwart a rising China.THE LATEST NEWSInternationalDestroyed train cars near Larissa, Greece.Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York TimesTwo trains collided in Greece, killing at least 36 people.Bola Tinubu, the 70-year-old candidate of the governing party, won Nigeria’s presidential election. His opponents say the contest was rigged.The biggest tank battle of the war in Ukraine so far was a defeat for Russia.King Charles hosted an E.U. leader for tea on the day of a trade deal, upsetting critics who felt his behavior was too political.An Israeli raid to capture Palestinian gunmen turned into one of the most violent encounters in the West Bank in decades, a Times video investigation shows.A Mediterranean cruise ship has become a shelter for people displaced by the earthquake in Turkey.BusinessA co-founder of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange FTX pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.Communities in the United States have pushed back against the spread of dollar stores.Republicans are calling environmentally conscious investing “woke capitalism,” pulling businesses into partisan politics.Twitter outages have risen as Elon Musk has slashed the company’s work force.Other Big StoriesMany undocumented immigrants are leaving the U.S. after decades and returning to their countries of origin.The police charged a 23-year-old man with murder over a sidewalk shooting in St. Louis. A witness captured the killing on video.OpinionsIf Nigeria is to have a functional democracy, its people need radical transparency from election officials, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says.Lebanon’s economic crisis has forced citizens to become bank robbers to access their own money, this video argues.Labs that study viruses need to become more secure, David Wallace-Wells writes.MORNING READSAddison’s Walk in Oxford, England.Max Miechowski for The New York TimesThe Lion and the Hobbit: Discover where C.S. Lewis wrote.Comfort zone: Eugene Levy hates traveling. That’s what makes his travel show work.Advice from Wirecutter: Clean your air fryer every time you use it.Lives Lived: Charles Pernasilice wasn’t supposed to be at the Attica Correctional Facility. But his temporary stay there coincided with the deadliest prison uprising in U.S. history, which would haunt him for the rest of his life. He died at 70.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICLawsuit: L.A. County agreed to pay Vanessa Bryant and her daughters nearly $30 million in a settlement over photos shared from the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash.Jersey numbers: The Eagles are proposing to allow players to wear No. 0 again. It hasn’t been allowed since 1973.A dwindling chance: LeBron James suffered a foot injury that could sideline him for weeks, a potential blow to the Lakers’ postseason chances.ARTS AND IDEAS Pink Floyd in 1973.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThe power of ‘Dark Side’Mortality, madness and greed: On “The Dark Side of the Moon,” released 50 years ago today, Pink Floyd transformed grim subjects into indelible rock music.The album’s sonic experimentation — the ticking clocks of “Time,” the soaring vocals of “The Great Gig in the Sky” — have had an enduring appeal. The record spent almost 14 years on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart, and it remains popular on streaming platforms. “‘Dark Side’ was an album that worked equally well to show off a new stereo,” the Times critic Jon Pareles writes, “or to be contemplated in private communion with headphones and a joint.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookKelly Marshall for The New York TimesLoad up corn tortillas with spiced shrimp and red cabbage.What to ReadA new biography shows Karl Lagerfeld to be more business whiz than artist.What to Listen toFive minutes that will make you love jazz piano.Late NightStephen Colbert joked about Fox News hosts’ texts.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was jailbird. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Singer Simone (four letters).And here’s today’s Wordle.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. The word “geezerishness” appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday, in a review of John Sayles’s new novel.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about abortion pills.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      How Paul Vallas Became the Chicago Mayoral Election Front-Runner

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      Mr. Vallas, a former public school executive with more conservative views on crime and education, will face Brandon Johnson, a progressive county commissioner, in an April runoff.CHICAGO — When Paul Vallas ran for mayor of Chicago four years ago, it did not go well. He finished in a distant ninth place, winning only 5 percent of the vote and barely registering as an electoral afterthought.But this time, after finishing well ahead of eight other candidates on Tuesday in the first round of balloting, Mr. Vallas has emerged as the front-runner. He will face Brandon Johnson in an April 4 runoff to lead America’s third-largest city.That matchup gives Chicagoans a choice between two Democrats with starkly different philosophies and life experiences: The younger, unabashedly progressive Mr. Johnson, a county commissioner and teacher who is Black; and the older, far less liberal Mr. Vallas, a white man who is a former public school executive and vocal supporter of law enforcement.Mr. Vallas’s reversal of political fortune since his defeat four years ago reflects a much different electoral mood in Chicago and the appeal of tough-on-crime policies for urban voters. Though his personal style and story are different, Mr. Vallas’s platform has similarities to the message Mayor Eric Adams of New York City used to win election in 2021.“Public safety is the fundamental right of every American: It is a civil right and it is the principal responsibility of government,” Mr. Vallas said Tuesday night in a speech. “And we will have a safe Chicago. We will make Chicago the safest city in America.”Mr. Vallas, 69, grew up on Chicago’s South Side and is a familiar figure in local government. He led Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001 before leaving to run the school systems in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Conn. In those positions, he cultivated a reputation as a crisis manager and charter school supporter willing to take on hard jobs and implement sweeping changes, an approach that garnered a mix of praise and criticism.Paul Vallas, former superintendent of schools, visiting students as he toured the campus of A.P. Tureaud Elementary School in New Orleans in 2007.Cheryl Gerber for The New York TimesBut it was Mr. Vallas’s hard-line message on crime and policing that elevated him in this year’s nine-candidate mayoral field. After unsuccessful runs for governor in 2002, lieutenant governor in 2014 and mayor in 2019, Mr. Vallas positioned himself this year well to the political right of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and even further to the right of Mr. Johnson.On Chicago’s influential political left, the prospect of a Vallas mayoralty has been met with fear, derision and implications that he is really more of a Republican than the lifelong Democrat he claims to be.“We cannot have this man as the mayor of the city of Chicago,” Mr. Johnson, 46, whose campaign is backed by the powerful and politically liberal Chicago Teachers Union, told his supporters on Tuesday night. “Our children and families across Chicago can’t afford it.”Supporters of Mr. Johnson said they appreciated his approach on education and policing. Mr. Johnson at one point suggested that he agreed with the movement to reduce funding for police departments, though he later backtracked.“I like his opinions about funding the police differently, not defunding but doing it differently,” said Carla Moulton, 61, a legal secretary who voted for Mr. Johnson.Mr. Vallas was the only white politician in the field, which included seven Black candidates and one Hispanic contender. Chicago, which has a history of racial and ethnic groups sometimes voting as blocs, has roughly equal numbers of Black, white and Hispanic residents.Progressives united against Mr. Vallas because of his views on the police, his track record supporting charter schools and, most recently, a Chicago Tribune report that his Twitter account liked an array of offensive posts on Twitter about Ms. Lightfoot. (Mr. Vallas suggested his account was breached.) Mr. Vallas also said in a television interview in 2009 that he considered himself more of a Republican than a Democrat, a strike against him in the eyes of many voters in overwhelmingly liberal Chicago.Police officers in Chicago watched as Chicago Public Schools students staged a walkout and a rally in front of school district headquarters in downtown Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAs he made his case to voters, Mr. Vallas welcomed an endorsement from the local Fraternal Order of Police, called for the replacement of Chicago Police Department leaders and put forth a plan to improve arrest rates and prosecute more misdemeanor crimes. His campaign website described Chicago as a near dystopia in which “city leadership has surrendered us all to a criminal element that acts with seeming impunity in treating unsuspecting, innocent people as prey.”For many voters, unnerved by homicide rates that soared to generational highs during the coronavirus pandemic, that message resonated.“I was never scared before,” said Martha Wicker, 61, who voted for Mr. Vallas. “Now I don’t want to be on the train alone when it’s dark.”Mike Curran, 50, a real estate broker, said he also voted for Mr. Vallas because of public safety concerns.“I’m very disappointed in the last four years,” Mr. Curran said. “I grew up in Detroit and know what can happen to a city. I voted for Vallas because I’m extremely fed up with crime in the neighborhood.”During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Vallas became a sought-after leader for school systems in crisis. He took over Chicago Public Schools in the years after the district was referred to as the country’s worst. He led the Philadelphia school system and expanded charter schools after the state took over the district. And after Hurricane Katrina, he oversaw the rebuilding of the New Orleans school system.Creg Williams, who worked as a school district administrator under Mr. Vallas in multiple cities, described his former boss as an energetic, determined leader who was open to criticism but steadfast in advancing his vision.“He looks at problems and he thinks about, ‘How do I innovate and how do I create? How do I make this change, and make that change a lasting change?’” said Dr. Williams, who later worked as a school superintendent in other districts and who has supported Mr. Vallas’s campaign.During his stint with the Chicago school district, Mr. Vallas had a cordial relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union, an organization that battled repeatedly with the last two Chicago mayors and that helped elevate Mr. Johnson’s profile in this year’s campaign.Mr. Vallas turning in his ballot at a Chicago elementary school on Tuesday.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesDeborah Lynch, whose tenure as president of the teachers’ union overlapped briefly with Mr. Vallas’s stint as chief executive of the Chicago schools, said she appreciated Mr. Vallas’s approach even though she did not agree with him on every issue.“He was a leader with lots of energy, lots of ideas, lots of plans,” said Ms. Lynch, who now lives in suburban Chicago and who supports Mr. Vallas’s mayoral campaign. “Some of those plans went as intended. Some, you know, were lessons learned. But I think who he was then, and who he is now: He has a vision, but he also backs up his vision with specific plans.”His work, however, has also brought criticism. Mr. Vallas was appointed in 2017 to the board of trustees at Chicago State University,which was struggling financially.After arriving there, he quickly moved into a top administrative role, where he was charged with helping set the course for the university’s future. But as it became clear he was planning to run for mayor in 2019, he was forced out. The Rev. Marshall Hatch Sr., who at the time was the chairman of the university’s board, said he believed Mr. Vallas “didn’t help at all” and had “no impact,” though others on campus defended his work.“It didn’t make a lot of sense, other than the school was in trouble and it looked like the school’s in such a crisis that, hey, let’s throw a fixer like Paul over there,” Mr. Hatch said. “It didn’t last long.”Julie Bosman More

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      Chicago Municipal Election Results 2023

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      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Neil Berg, Irineo Cabreros, Nate Cohn, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Ilana Marcus, Charlie Smart and Isaac White. Editing by Wilson Andrews, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. More

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      Why Chicago’s Mayoral Election Matters, Even if You Don’t Live in Chicago

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      America’s cities increasingly face similar problems, particularly worries about crime and hangovers from the pandemic. That’s why the mayor’s election in Chicago on Tuesday is about more than Chicago.CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces eight challengers in a fierce mayoral election and risks being ousted from City Hall after one term. Here’s why the election, at a time of widespread unease in the nation’s cities, reflects issues that are resonating around the country.The race is a referendum on crime and policing.On the campaign trail and in debates, the election in Chicago has been driven by one issue above all others: crime.Under Ms. Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019, homicide rates soared to generational highs, an increase that was most deeply felt in pockets of the South and West Sides that have historically been plagued by gun violence. And residents throughout the city say they are unsettled by a spike in robberies, muggings, carjackings and other property crimes, and they have placed the blame on Ms. Lightfoot.She is facing her most serious competition from a tough-on-crime candidate, Paul Vallas, a former public schools executive who began attacking her record on public safety early in the campaign.The same political dynamic has played out in mayoral races in New York City and Los Angeles, with varying results: Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, a former police captain, won office in 2021 amid widespread concerns about crime. But last fall, Los Angeles voters chose Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, over Rick Caruso, a billionaire mall developer who spent close to $100 million on a campaign that focused directly on concerns over crime and disorder.Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago met with Mayor Eric Adams of New York last year to discuss crime-fighting strategies.Tyler Pasciak Lariviere/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressMs. Lightfoot has crisscrossed Chicago telling voters that crime is down in the city and that her focus on the issue is yielding results: Homicides dropped in 2022 after rising in the two previous years. For many voters, it may be coming too late.The next Chicago mayor could reshape downtown.“Make no little plans,” Chicagoans like to say, quoting the city planner and architect Daniel Burnham, whose vision transformed Chicago’s lakefront and skyline.Cities around the county are struggling to redefine and revitalize their downtowns in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. And whoever wins the mayoral election in Chicago will have the opportunity to make very big plans for the city’s downtown, including its most prominent neighborhood, the Loop. The area was battered during the pandemic and has yet to fully recover.Ms. Lightfoot has already made proposals that could nudge the Loop away from its identity as a center for office workers, and toward becoming a more residential neighborhood and hub of cultural life. (The Chicago Loop Alliance, a business advocacy group, says the area is already well on its way: There are now more people living in the Loop than before the pandemic, reflecting growth of about 9 percent since 2020.)One plan introduced under the Lightfoot administration addresses the high vacancy rates for commercial space in the Loop, calling for older office buildings on LaSalle Street in the heart of Chicago’s business district to be turned into apartments and condominiums, including affordable housing. If the plan is successful, it may become a model for other big cities that find themselves with excess commercial real estate as remote workers continue to balk at returning downtown.Whoever wins the mayoral election in Chicago will have the chance to shape downtown Chicago as it adapts to the effects of the pandemic.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBig-city politics are in flux.Mayoral elections in Chicago are officially nonpartisan, but none of the nine candidates on the ballot on Tuesday is a Republican. (In the 2020 presidential election, 83 percent of Chicago voters voted Democratic.) Assuming none wins an outright majority on Tuesday, the top two finishers in the race will advance to a runoff on April 4. Who those candidates turn out to be may offer a glimpse into the direction of urban politics in post-pandemic America.Ms. Lightfoot has been attacked from both the right and the left, and her challengers fit in familiar niches on the national Democratic spectrum. Mr. Vallas has attracted support from more conservative voters, especially in heavily white wards on the Northwest and Southwest Sides, where many police officers, firefighters and other city workers live. He has also gained support from Democrats who voted for Ms. Lightfoot in 2019 but are now fed up over crime and are willing to vote for a more conservative candidate.The mayor also faces serious challenges from the liberal wing of the party, especially from Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the liberal Chicago Teachers Union. Mr. Johnson has gained momentum in the last several weeks, polls suggest, as progressive voters who are unwilling to give Ms. Lightfoot another chance have searched for an alternative. But at a time when public safety is the No. 1 issue for many voters, Mr. Johnson’s previous support for reducing police funding — a stance he later backtracked from — may complicate his mayoral bid. More

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      Chicago Mayoral Race: Lori Lightfoot Faces Challengers

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      Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces a wide field of challengers on Tuesday, including one front-runner who has portrayed Chicago as a city in disarray.CHICAGO — Chicagoans were heading to the polls on Tuesday morning to vote in highly contested mayoral and City Council races that have largely focused on crime, policing and the performance of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is seeking a second term leading the nation’s third-largest city.Ms. Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who ran as a change agent vowing to root out corruption and reform the Chicago Police Department, won 74 percent of the vote in the final balloting when elected four years ago, a favorite of progressives who hailed her historic victory as the city’s first Black, female mayor.But she has faced widespread dissatisfaction from voters since, and many have thrown their support to other candidates: Eight challengers have lined up against her, and unless one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote — a highly unlikely scenario — the top two finishers on Tuesday will advance to a runoff on April 4.Among the front-runners in the race is Paul Vallas, a Democrat with more conservative views on crime and education, who has portrayed Chicago as being in a state of disarray.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesPolls suggest that Ms. Lightfoot, whose rivals have positioned themselves to both her political left and right, is in a tight contest for one of those spots. Voters have said in surveys that issues driving the race include crime, the economy, education and immigration.Perhaps most threatening to Ms. Lightfoot’s re-election chances is the spike in homicides and shootings in 2020 and 2021, and civil unrest and looting that scarred retailers, including those on the famed Magnificent Mile. In 2021, robberies, thefts and burglaries increased from the year before, leaving many Chicagoans unsettled about the direction of the city.Monica Jain, a property manager who lives in the Gold Coast neighborhood near downtown Chicago, left a polling place on Monday and said that she had heard Ms. Lightfoot talk about how some crime rates had now decreased. But, Ms. Jain said, “I’m worried about the South and West Sides,” where gun violence is most acute.Among the front-runners in the race is Paul Vallas, a Democrat with more conservative views on crime and education, who has portrayed Chicago as being in a state of disarray. Running with an endorsement from the local Fraternal Order of Police, he has called for expanding the police force, improving arrest rates for serious crimes and expanding charter schools.Brandon Johnson, a mayoral candidate and Democratic county board commissioner, answered a question from a Kenwood Academy High School student at a mayoral forum on Saturday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBut in making her final pitch to voters this weekend, Ms. Lightfoot pointed to investments in long-neglected neighborhoods and made the case that the city had emerged from the coronavirus pandemic in a strong position.“If you care about making sure that we continue to right historic wrongs and invest in areas of our city that have been without for far too long, that’s on the ballot,” Ms. Lightfoot told a crowd at a union hall on Saturday.Voters appeared unsure of whether they were willing to give her another chance. Chicago mayors have wide-ranging powers, even compared with mayors in New York City and Los Angeles: They oversee the sprawling public-transit system, Police and Fire Departments, schools, parks and other agencies. And when crime spikes or potholes go unfilled, Chicagoans tend to blame their mayor.Ms. Lightfoot, 60, has faced a cascade of crises since taking office. In 2019, she clashed with the powerful teachers’ union, leading to an 11-day strike, the longest in decades. Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit, sending unemployment soaring and leaving skyscrapers in the Loop mostly empty of workers and Chicago businesses struggling to survive.The economy has since rebounded, and downtown Chicago is attracting tourists and conventions again. But Ms. Lightfoot appears to have made far more enemies than friends as mayor, struggles to find support on the City Council and has gained a reputation as a pugilistic and mercurial leader.A voter filled out her electronic ballot on Monday in the final hour of early voting at the Welles Park polling site in Chicago.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Vallas, 69, has taken a lead in the polls, but has also been dogged by ideological inconsistencies. He said in a television interview in 2009 that he considered himself more of a Republican than a Democrat, a strike against Mr. Vallas in the eyes of many voters in overwhelmingly liberal Chicago. Last week, The Chicago Tribune reported that Mr. Vallas’s Twitter account had liked a series of tweets that used insulting and racist language; Mr. Vallas suggested that hackers were to blame.Ms. Lightfoot is also fighting a challenge from Brandon Johnson, a Democratic county board commissioner who has been endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Mr. Johnson staked out a position to the left of Ms. Lightfoot on policing, at one point suggesting that he agreed with the movement to reduce funding to police departments, though he later backtracked.Another contender, Representative Jesús G. García, is also competing for votes from progressives: He traces his Chicago political experience back to the campaign to elect the city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983. Mr. García, who was born in Mexico, would be Chicago’s first Hispanic mayor. In 2015, he ran for mayor against the incumbent, Rahm Emanuel, winning enough votes to force a runoff.Polls suggest that Willie Wilson, a businessman with a base of support from working-class Black voters, is also within striking distance of the runoff.Mitch Smith More