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() — In about four weeks, Chicago residents will decide who will lead their city — the nation’s third-largest — as a mayoral election looms.
At a forum on Tuesday night, incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot fought off repeated criticism from rival candidates over her handling of crime and policing from other candidates. She has a total of eight challengers in a crowded race that includes other city council members, a Congressman, the founder of a medical supplies company and a former Chicago Public Schools executive.
The Chicago Tribune reported that homicides spiked dramatically to 776 and 804 in 2020 and 2021, respectively, compared to 500 in 2019. The murders, according to the newspaper, were mostly from gun violence. Shootings and carjackings, the Tribune pointed out, also went up.
Lightfoot said her administration is “constantly evaluating options to do everything that we can to make Chicago the safest big city in the country.”
“We’re hiring more, we’re holding violent, dangerous people accountable. We’re making sure that we’re going into communities and helping uplift them,” Lightfoot said. “You can’t just arrest your way out of the problem, so the other thing that we’re doing is making concrete investments to stop the pipeline of young boys to the streets, which is also a substantial challenge.”
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While many of Lightfoot’s opponents are using crime rates to attack the mayor, Lightfoot stood firm, saying the other candidates have no solutions of their own.
“It’s easy to come up here and say sound bites,” Lightfoot said Tuesday. “But what I didn’t hear is any actual concrete solutions — and many of the things that we did hear were things that we’re already doing.”
A poll conducted for Crain’s Chicago Business and The Daily Line showed just 9% of those who participated say the city is headed in the right direction — a drop of 12 percentage points from a previous survey. When it comes to safety, a total of 76% of survey participants said the city is somewhat or very unsafe, and 81% say the situation is worse compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic.
A total of eight in 10 of those who completed the survey, which was published earlier this month, said the city is less safe than it was. However, as Crain’s noted, “it’s not entirely clear” how much of this is because of actual shifts in public perception, and how much might be because the poll attracted people who are particularly upset. Polco, which prepared and conducted the survey, said it may be a mix of both.
