Chicago elected first Mayor, African American and Lesbian | Chronic

The democrat Lori Lightfoot was overwhelmingly elected as the first African American and Lesbian Mayor of Chicago, the third most populous city in the United States, and in her first public speech pledged to look after the interests of all citizens "the powerfull".

"Today, not only have we entered history, but we have started a movement of change"said the 56-year-old lawyer last night to celebrate her victory in a city hotel soon after the electoral council proclaimed her winner with 73.8% of the vote.

"When we started our campaign, nobody trusted our possibilities, now, see where we came from", added the elected mayor, who promised to put "the interests of all the inhabitants of the city on the interests of some powerful".

Lightfoot is facing issues such as high crime rates, police brutality, endemic corruption, financial deficits and lack of resources for public education.

Chicago recorded 561 murders in 2018, a hundred fewer than the year before, but more than New York and Los Angeles, the two most populous cities in the country.

These homicide rates led the president Donald Trump to threaten in 2017 to intervene in the city with the federal forces to limit what he described as "Butcher".

In the elections of yesterday, Lightfoot beat the African-American Toni Preckwinklewho obtained 26.2% of the vote.

"It's clearly a historic night, because it was not so long ago, two African-American women occupying a second post at the mayor's office would have been unthinkable", expressed Prechwinkle.

In the elections, only 29% of the 1.5 million enrollees participated, less than the 34% who did it in the first round of February, in which 14 candidates participated.

This figure is the result of the reshuffle of the political council that saw the announcement last September of the current mayor, Rahm Emanuel, not to aspire to a third term.

Former Congressman and former Chief of Staff of the Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who took office with the best qualifications, abruptly reduced his career to the rank of City Hall Leader following a case of police violence that occurred in 2014, when a white uniform killed 16 shots in the back of an african american teenager.

Emanuel lost support from the black community after his leaders accused him of concealing the crime.

To the police, Jason Van DykeHe was sentenced to 81 months in jail for second degree homicide.