Lori Lightfoot Made Chicago History as the City’s First LGBTQ Mayor

Lori Lightfoot’s 2019 election marked several milestones in Chicago’s political history. She became the city’s first openly LGBTQ mayor and its first Black woman to serve as mayor. She was also the second woman to hold the office, following Jane Byrne, and the third Black person elected to the position.

Lightfoot served as Chicago’s 56th mayor from 2019 through 2023. Her election also placed her among a small group of openly lesbian women to lead one of the 10 most populous cities in the United States. For LGBTQ Chicagoans, her victory represented a significant change in who could occupy the city’s top elected office and how the city’s leadership was represented.

Born Lori Elaine Lightfoot on August 4, 1962, she built her career as an attorney before entering the mayoral contest. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, she worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois and later became a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown.

Her public-service work included several roles in Chicago government. Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed Lightfoot president of the Chicago Police Board, a position that placed her in the city’s system for reviewing police misconduct cases. She also chaired the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force, which was charged with examining oversight of the Chicago Police Department.

Lightfoot entered the 2019 mayoral race and advanced to a runoff against Toni Preckwinkle. She won the runoff in all 50 of Chicago’s wards, securing a citywide victory and the mayor’s office.

Her rise combined a legal background, experience in municipal oversight and an identity that had not previously been represented in Chicago’s mayoralty. While her tenure ended in 2023, her election remains a defining moment in the city’s LGBTQ political history: it established the first openly LGBTQ mayor in Chicago and added a new milestone to the city’s record of women and Black leaders in public office.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Lori Lightfoot” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Lightfoot The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/chicago-mayor-race-rahm-emanuel-women-of-color-lori-lightfoot-preckwinkle-mendoza/ - https://chicago.gopride.com/news/article.cfm/articleid/94063636 - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/elections/ct-met-cb-lori-lightfoot-chicago-mayor-bio-20190124-story.html - https://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/lori-lightfoot-chicago-mayor-election-2019/ - https://chicagopatf.org/about/task-force-members/ - https://www.advocate.com/politics/2019/2/20/progressive-black-lesbian-who-could-be-chicagos-mayor Image rights Original illustrative artwork created from story keywords. It is not a documentary photograph.