Pictured in the long story of this article are Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who is Black, ousted Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and former Chicago schools CEO Paul Valas, Valas and Johnson the top two vote-getters in Tuesday's election who will move on to the nonpartisan runoff in April

CHICAGO, Illinois-In an election that drew more than half a million people to the polls, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city's first Black female and openly gay mayor, lost her bid for a second term on Tuesday, coming in third in a crowded field of nine contenders and failing to qualify to move on to a non-partisan runoff set for April.

Former Chicago schools CEO Paul Valas, whom firefighters and other first res-ponders championed and who promised voters that he would fight crime and poverty, led the field of candidates, followed by Brandon Johnson, a Cook County Commissioner who was supported by progressives, the Black religious community, and the Chicago Teachers Union. Valas and Johnson will square-off next month in what pundits say will likely be a heated election relative to public policy issues impacting the city and its residents.

Valas finished with 34 percent of the vote and Johnson 20 percent while Lightfoot got a dismal 17 percent.

A Democrat and an attorney, Lightfoot, 60, made history in 2019 when she became the first Black woman and first openly gay person to lead the city, but her popularly began to wane as crime went wild and the pandemic took an already struggling and largely Black major American city into deeper despair, financially and otherwise.

The second most populous city in the U.S. behind New York and Los Angeles, Chicago has a population of roughly 2.6 million people. As the seat of Cook county it is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area. It is also the international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation.