Lightfoot To Officially Enter Race For Mayor
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Former Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot will formally announce her bid for mayor on Thursday, becoming the tenth candidate to join the race.
Lightfoot has been aggressively challenging the policies of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting video.
She also led the Police Accountability Task Force he created in the wake of the McDonald scandal, issuing a report sharply criticizing the department, which the panel found was plagued by systematic racism that undermined its relationship with minority communities.
Lightfoot resigned as head of the Police Board on Monday, and already has hired a campaign team of consultants, TV producers, and a pollster.
She was scheduled to announce her plans to run at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Hyatt Regency.
Eight other challengers have announced bids against Emanuel, including former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, former Chicago Public Schools principal Troy LaRaviere, former CPS Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas, Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, millionaire businessman Willie Wilson, tech entrepreneur Neal Sales-Griffin, Black Lives Matter activist Ja'Mal Green, and former aldermanic candidate John Kozlar.
Aside from her criticism of Emanuel, pundits expect Lightfoot to most often butt heads with McCarthy. She recently turned up the heat on the former police superintendent when she told the Chicago Sun-Times that he never should have been hired to run the department.
A former federal prosecutor, Lightfoot is a partner at Mayer Brown, one of the city's most prominent law firms. She is openly gay and expected to run as a progressive.
Some experts predict she has a good shot at forcing Emanuel into a runoff election and beating him, but that will depend on how much political support and campaign donations she can drum up.
Those contributions could start coming in quickly now that her campaign is about to officially begin.
