How will history remember Mayor Lori Lightfoot?
CHICAGO (CBS) -- How will history remember Mayor Lori Lightfoot?
She is one of the few one-term mayors in the past century in Chicago and made history as the first openly gay, Black female mayor. CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov takes a deeper dive into her legacy.
Lori Lightfoot entered the mayor's office with a city-wide tsunami of support over her promise of change.
Four years later, Lightfoot is leaving City Hall to little fanfare but, many believe, not in vain.
"I think Mayor Lightfoot should hold her head up high," said outgoing 6th Ward Ald. Roderick Sawyer.
Sawyer doesn't say that lightly. He ran against Lightfoot in this year's mayoral election to operate the city differently than she did. But Sawyer says Lightfoot is leaving office having shrunk the city's deficit, with a truly balanced budget in sight.
"She did a respectable amount of work here in the City of Chicago," said Elmhurst University political science professor Connie Mixon.
That work included a commitment to investing in the city's South and West sides and laying the groundwork for the expansion of the CTA Red Line from 95th Street farther south.
"I think her push for equity in underserved areas of the city will be something she's remembered by," said Mixon.
Mixon, and others, also credit Lightfoot for getting a City Council ethics reform ordinance passed and virtually ending aldermanic prerogative, or, their ultimate decision-making power.
"Her ability to break up key components of that machine, if sustained over the long term, " Mixon said. "I think she'll be remembered as the mayor who broke up machine politics."
Lightfoot also increased the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour and, of course, led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest. At times she was criticized and she did it all unapologetically.
Sometimes, Sawyer believes, to a fault.
"A lot of voters like feisty ... A lot of others could see it's not beneficial to the city," Sawyer said.
Mixon says criticizing Lightfoot's tough and at times combative demeanor is a slippery slope. While it may have hurt her re-election bid, it's a criticism not lobbed at her predecessors Rahm Emanuel and Richard M. Daley -- both of whom were also known as tough.
"I kind of don't want to add to that chorus," said Mixon "I do think there's a lot of underlying sexism."
Former Ald. Dick Simpson believes Lightfoot's governing style will ultimately be a small footnote to her legacy.
"I think she will be remembered very well in the history books," Simpson said said.
"I believe it's going to be considered a transitory period. A period of transition, a period of we're still trying to figure ourselves out as a city," Sawyer added.
Sawyer believes, historically speaking, that won't be a strike against her.
