Chicago Voters Ready for Change: Runoff Election to Decide Future of City Hall

Chicago voters have elected to move forward with a runoff election on April 4th after none of the nine mayoral candidates won an outright majority in the first round of voting. This runoff election will decide the future of City Hall.

Incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position, failed to get enough votes in the nine-person race to move on to the runoff election. Lightfoot had asked voters for four more years to continue her work reducing crime and investing in underserved neighborhoods.

Paul Vallas, the centrist, ex-CEO of Chicago Public Schools and the field’s only white candidate, came in first place with more than one-third of the vote as of late Tuesday evening. He ran as a moderate law-and-order candidate. In second place was Lori Lightfoot’s former chief of staff, Toni Preckwinkle, who ran on an unabashedly progressive agenda.

The runoff election will be between Vallas and Preckwinkle, and the winner will be the next mayor of Chicago. The election will be a choice between two very different visions for the city. Vallas has promised to focus on public safety, while Preckwinkle has promised to focus on social justice.

The results of the first round of voting show that Chicagoans are ready for change. They rejected both an incumbent mayor and a sitting congressman. The runoff election will decide the future of City Hall and the direction of the city for the next four years.