Lori Lightfoot : Net Worth, Family, Wife, Partner, Education, Children, Age, Biography and Political Career

Lori Elaine Lightfoot is an American attorney and politician serving since 2019 as the 56th mayor of Chicago. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Before becoming mayor, Lightfoot worked in private legal practice as a partner at Mayer Brown and held various government positions in Chicago. Most notably, she served as president of the Chicago Police Board and chair of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force. Lightfoot ran for Mayor of Chicago in 2019, advancing to a runoff election against Toni Preckwinkle in the February 2019 election. She defeated Preckwinkle in the runoff on April 2, 2019.

Lightfoot is the first openly lesbian African-American woman to be elected mayor of a major city in the United States. Moreover, she is the second woman and the third African-American—after Harold Washington and Eugene Sawyer—to be mayor of Chicago.

Lori Lightfoot Net Worth

Lori Lightfoot Net Worth is $ 1 to 5 Million in 2021.

Lori Lightfoot Family

Lightfoot was born in Massillon, Ohio, the youngest of four children. Her mother, Ann Lightfoot, was a nighttime healthcare aide and school board member, and her father, Elijah Lightfoot, a local factory worker and janitor. She grew up in a mostly white neighborhood on the west side of the city.

Lori Lightfoot Wife and Children

On May 31, 2014, she married Amy Eshleman, a former Chicago Public Library employee, who is now a full-time mother to the couple's adopted daughter, Vivian.

Lori Lightfoot Career and Achievement

Assistant U.S. Attorney (1996–2002)

After graduating law school, Lightfoot became a practicing attorney at the Mayer Brown law firm, serving a wide cross-section of clients. Lightfoot first entered the public sector as Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. During her mayoral campaign, Lightfoot cited several reasons for entering public service, including a desire to represent the African-American community, a sense of injustice based on the murder of a family member by a Ku Klux Klan member in the 1920s, and struggles with the law encountered by her older brother, who was charged with possession of crack-cocaine with intent to distribute.

While working as a federal prosecutor, Lightfoot helped to prosecute those accused of federal crimes, including drug crimes. She assisted with Operation Silver Shovel, an FBI investigation into Chicago corruption. She helped to convict alderman Virgil Jones. In 1999, Lightfoot was issued a warning for misconduct by judge Richard Posner in a case in which she was found by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to have misled a United States Circuit Judge regarding a suspect's whereabouts, making it impossible for the judge to stay the suspect's extradition to Norway. Lightfoot and the Justice Department at the time disputed this characterization of her actions.

Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards (2002–04)

In 2002, Lightfoot was appointed chief administrator of the Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards, a now-defunct governmental police oversight group, by Police Superintendent Terry Hillard. She held the position for two years. In the position, she was in charge of investigating possible cases of police misconduct, including police shootings of civilians. However, a Chicago Tribune report found that the Office of Professional Standards' investigations often lacked thoroughness. Lightfoot says her recommendations for disciplinary action were often rejected by the police department.

In one notable case, Lightfoot went against Police Department orthodoxy by recommending the firing of officer Alvin Weems, who shot and killed an unarmed man, Michael Pleasance. Weems was initially believed to have accidentally shot Pleasance, but after video evidence contradicting the initial claims was revealed, even Weems himself expressed feeling that the shooting was unjustified. Weems was not fired by the Chicago Police Department, but the city was eventually forced to pay a settlement to the Pleasance family. Weems later committed suicide.

In another controversial case where officer Phyllis Clinkscales shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Robert Washington, the Chicago Tribune reported that Lightfoot determined that the shooting was justified. In doing so, the Tribune said she reversed the order of her predecessor, who had called for Clinkscales' firing. Clinkscales' account of the events of the shooting had been found to contain untrue statements in an investigation. Lightfoot disputes this account of Clinkscales' case, saying that the police superintendent at the time was responsible for declining Lightfoot's predecessor's finding that the shooting was unjustified. Lightfoot said her action on the case was to push for a 30-day suspension for Clinkscales, which she implied was the most that was possible given the circumstances.

Other Roles in Chicago City Government (2004–05)

Lightfoot then moved on to work in the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications. She was later hired by Mayor Richard M. Daley as deputy chief of the Chicago Department of Procurement Services. There, she and her boss, Mary Dempsey, investigated Chicago corruption, drawing Mayor Daley's ire in the process. Lightfoot and Dempsey's investigations included probes of then-Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich's associate Tony Rezko and prominent Daley donor Elzie Higginbottom. Lightfoot worked at the Department of Procurement Services for a few months, subsequently returning to Mayer Brown. Lightfoot has suggested that she left the Department of Procurement Services because of dismay at corruption in City Hall.

Private Practice

As an attorney at Mayer Brown, Lightfoot represented Republicans in two cases protesting Democratic gerrymandering. At Mayer Brown, she also defended Chicago police officer Paul Powers against charges of physical assault. In 2019, after facing criticism over defending Powers, Lightfoot cited video evidence in favor of her former client's innocence.

Lightfoot was briefly hired by the city of Chicago to defend the city against charges brought by the family of a mentally ill woman, Christina Eilman, who was brought into custody by Chicago police after suffering a mental breakdown at Midway Airport. Eilman suffered sexual assault and a seven-story fall after being released by police into Englewood. Eilman's family reached a $22.5 million settlement with the city.

Lightfoot has also served on the boards of the Illinois chapters of NARAL and the ACLU. She has served as external counsel for Bank of America. In 2013, Lightfoot was a finalist for the position of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, but the job went to Zachary T. Fardon.

Chicago Police Board and Task Force (2015–18)

Lightfoot returned to the public sector in 2015, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to replace 19-year incumbent Demetrius Carney as president of the Chicago Police Board. The board's main responsibility is to make recommendations for or against disciplinary action on certain disputed cases of police misconduct. Under Lightfoot's leadership, the board became more punitive, firing officers in 72% of its cases. In the wake of the controversy over the murder of Laquan McDonald, Emanuel also appointed Lightfoot as chair of a special Police Accountability Task Force. In 2016, the Task Force, led by Lightfoot, filed a report critical of the Chicago Police Department's practices. She specifically criticized the police union's "code of silence." The anti-police brutality activist organization Black Youth Project 100's Chicago chapter released a statement denouncing Lightfoot and the board and task force for a "lack of accountability."

In 2017, Emanuel re-appointed Lightfoot to a second term as president of the Police Board. The decision came after Lightfoot and Emanuel had publicly come into conflict, particularly over Emanuel's attempts to reach a police reform deal with Trump Administration Justice Department officials that would avoid a consent decree and oversight from a federal judge. Lightfoot called Emanuel's approach "fundamentally flawed." At the time, there was already speculation that Lightfoot was planning a run for mayor of Chicago in 2019, though she denied the rumors. Lightfoot resigned from the Police Board in May 2018, just before announcing her mayoral campaign.

Mayor of Chicago

Lightfoot took office on May 20, 2019. Incumbent mayor Rahm Emanuel reportedly modeled the transition between his and Lightfoot's administrations on the U.S. presidential transition between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Emanuel was part of the Bush-Obama transition as Obama's chief of staff designate. Lightfoot endorsed the comparison between her transition and the Bush-Obama transition.

On April 4, Lightfoot named key members of her transition team: her campaign manager Manny Perez to serve as intergovernmental advisor, Maurice Classen to serve as her chief of staff, Sarah Pang and Ra Joy to serve as senior advisors, and Lisa Schneider-Fabes to serve as transition manager.

As mayor-elect, Lightfoot expressed a desire for the Laquan McDonald trial to be reexamined, urging the U.S. Attorney's Office to reopen their grand jury investigation to examine if any civil rights were violated.

On April 6, 2019, Lightfoot told the Chicago Sun-Times that her staff would, during her first post-election weekend, spend time examining the city's 600-page agreement with Sterling Bay regarding the Lincoln Yards development. During her campaign, Lightfoot had been critical of the process that was being taken to reach the agreement. The following Monday, at her request, Mayor Rahm Emanuel postponed city council votes on the approval of $1.6 billion in tax increment financing subsidies for both the Lincoln Yards and The 78 mega-developments. After the developers of the two projects agreed to increase commitments to hiring minority-owned and women-owned contractors, Lightfoot announced that she now supported the deals, which were approved one day subsequent to her declaration of support.

One week before her inauguration, Lightfoot named lawyer and activist Candace Moore as Chicago's first-ever chief equity officer, a job in which Moore will focus on countering racial inequality in the city.

Three days before taking office, Lightfoot named Alderman Scott Waguespack to serve as finance committee chairman, Alderman Pat Dowell to serve as budget chairman, Alderman Tom Tunney to serve as zoning chairman and Alderman Gilbert Villegas to serve as floor leader and economic development chair.