The Ford School of Public Policy hosted former Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan Wednesday evening for “Governing in time of crisis: Lessons from two big city mayors,” the most recent event in the Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation lecture series. Moderated by Barbara L. McQuade, University of Michigan Law School professor, the discussion focused on the two mayors’ leadership in 2020 during COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
McQuade opened by asking both mayors about their paths to public service. Lightfoot said her decision to run for mayor stemmed from observing unmet needs in the city, but especially regarding police reform and the lack of investment in communities of Color.
“It became clear to me that the incumbent mayor didn’t have a plan to address any of those things,” Lightfoot said. “We saw the city as much smaller than it was, and I would always say during the campaign ‘Hey, we got to look at neighborhoods south of Roosevelt Road and neighborhoods west of Ashley,’ meaning the south sides and west sides, that were just literally being starved for resources.”
Following Lightfoot, Durkan described her lifelong passion for politics and early exposure to public service. However, she said running for mayor was never in her planned career path.
“One job I swore I never would do would be mayor,” Durkan said. “We ended up with a vacancy in Seattle … and we were at a really pivotal time in the city, and for me, it was a better time — my kids were mostly grown, not totally grown, and I talked to a lot of people and I loved the city.”
Both Lightfoot and Durkan emphasized the importance of communication during crises as mayors. Durkan said good communication relies on transparency and legitimacy, and noted misinformation spreads when the public isn’t well-informed.
“You communicate for a lot of reasons if you’re a leader,” Durkan said. “Number one, your job is to be an elected representative of them … If they don’t understand what their government is doing, I think you’re denting one of the principles of our democracy. Second is how you get legitimacy — if they don’t know what you’re doing in this day and age, they will suspect the worst.”
Lightfoot said a growing majority of people don’t get their news through traditional media outlets, explaining how her administration leveraged social media to reach residents. Lightfoot discussed how she turned viral memes of herself into campaigns promoting COVID-19 safety, collaborating with local artists.
“They really kind of rose up organically, but we loved it and really leaned into it,” Lightfoot said. “We made this whole series of Stay Home, Save Lives videos that really kind of rose from the creativity of Chicago artists (and) graphic artists and then we, of course, created a few of our own.”
The conversation shifted to the Black Lives Matter protests following Floyd’s death in 2020. Lightfoot described the specific challenges Chicago faced in managing both peaceful demonstrations and violent crashes.
“I’ve been in protest marches in my 62 plus years, but I never brought a bat, a tire iron, a frozen water bottle full of urine,” Lightfoot said. “I never brought other instruments to provoke violence and danger. And we were seeing that every day in different areas of our city.
Durkan shared her experience with misinformation during the protests, describing a specific instance where 14,000 complaints were filed as a result of a negative police interaction during a protest. Durkan also said misinformation spread on mainstream platforms such as Fox News.
“We had an active court order on what the police could and could not do, which in many ways meant we had to let them stay,” Durkan said. “And so, we see on Fox News that suddenly Fox News is running fabricated photos of what’s happening. They took pictures of Minneapolis fires, they superimposed people and said ‘Oh it’s Seattle’.”
Both Lightfoot and McQuade were publicly criticized by President Donald Trump for their handling of the pandemic and protests throughout 2020. In April 2020, Trump told Durkan to “take back your city,” and regularly criticized Lightfoot in Chicago. Durkan emphasized that healthy discourse between opposing viewpoints is crucial.
“Just because you disagree with someone, they don’t become the enemy,” Durkan said. “And we’ve got to get back to a place where we can have actual discourse and not just demonize and make people the enemy, because … people will choose not to serve, and then it become self-selective on who will serve, and it may not be the best people we want serving us.”
Like Durkan, Lightfoot said despite the complexities of leadership, she believes entering public service is worth it.
“I’m obviously 1000% biased, but no place else can you have such an immediate impact on someone’s life,” Lightfoot said. “You can conceive an idea, you can write the policy and you can then see it executed … because you’re that close to the people who you’re trying to serve.”
Rackham student Harrison DeChant said in an interview with The Michigan Daily that he admired Durkan’s emphasis on strong education policy.
“She talked about a policy for education that’s durable,” DeChant said. “Studying education policy, a lot of the times we look for not just college attendance or enrollment to measure success in programs, but what we call persistence. How many of those kids are going to persist and complete that degree? And in this case, when you talk about durability, how long are those programs going to last and how effective that can be.”
Daily Staff Reporter Aanya Panyadahundi can be reached at aanyat@umich.edu.
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