One indication that Lori Lightfoot is not your standard politician came at the end of the Chicago Teachers Union’s forum in December, when mayoral candidates were offered the chance to ask each other questions.
Like most of the other candidates in the race, she’s never held elected office, but she does have an extensive background in government—in her case, in criminal justice and as a troubleshooter in some of the city’s most challenging agencies. Indeed, parts of that background—as a federal prosecutor and as head of the police department’s Office of Professional Standards—have given pause to some activists who might otherwise have been drawn to her call for “a new progressive vision for the city.”
In 1996, urged on by a mentor at Mayer Brown, Lightfoot joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She was motivated in part by the fact that the office was “almost exclusively white male”; in her view people of color needed to be represented, particularly given the wide latitude in investigating and charging enjoyed by federal prosecutors. She also cites family history when describing her motivation. Her grandmother’s husband was murdered by a Klansman in the 1920s, when “there was never any thought that the guy would face justice”; an older brother has been in and out of prison, which she has said gives her insight into the impact of crime on families.
Lightfoot left after a few months, concerned, she now says, that corruption wasn’t being adequately addressed.
From that point Lightfoot became a leading voice pushing Emanuel to move on police reform, sometimes occupying a middle ground between protesters and the mayor, but often criticizing Emanuel sharply. She slammed him when he tried to head off a federal consent decree with a memorandum of understanding with the Trump Justice Department, saying the proposed agreement was “fundamentally flawed” and “sets the police department up for failure.” She pressed publicly for measures to increase the independence of the new Civilian Office of Police Accountability and called the mayor out for failing to follow through on a community oversight board. She has repeatedly pointed to the many task force recommendations that Emanuel has ignored. She criticized the proposed state-city consent decree for lacking bans on chokeholds and shooting into crowds and for failing to mandate a foot-pursuit policy. She has also been a forthright critic of the leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police.
