Mayors of American cities spend much of their time ensuring that basic services are delivered, attending community events and answering emails. However, the job sometimes requires responding to community-altering, life-and-death events. Meeting those moments with competence, compassion and grace requires statesmanship.
Nancy Rotering, the mayor of Highland Park, met her statesmanship moment four years ago while participating in her town’s popular Fourth of July parade. “The sun was shining, flags were waving, and we were all dressed in red, white and blue. We were ebullient,” she recalled.
Then a 21-year-old sniper on the rooftop of a local store unleashed a furious attack using an AR-15-style rifle. Seven people were killed, 48 were injured and the community was traumatized.
Rotering was marching in the parade when the shooting began and helped usher people to safety. After the shooter was apprehended, she continued to act calmly, compassionately and firmly. She comforted families, coordinated the city’s response and briefed the press. Her tone was resolute, determined and empathetic, but also weary, almost disbelieving. She and Gov. JB Pritzker attended funerals of the victims.
The mayor traveled to Washington a few weeks later and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the horrific events of that day.
“My fellow mayors across our great nation fear that it is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ a mass shooting will hit our towns,” she told the senators. “As mayors and municipal leaders, we are on the front lines of public safety. We constantly strategize the worst-case scenarios.”
Rotering described assault weapons as “weapons of war” that are “specifically designed to destroy human beings quickly and efficiently within seconds — dozens at a time.”
She urged Congress to take immediate action: Ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, make it easier to impose restraining orders against individuals deemed dangerous, reduce or eliminate immunity for gun dealers, require safe gun storage protocols and mandate national background checks, which she called “the foundation of any comprehensive gun violence prevention strategy.”
She also tried to reframe the gun debate: “Second Amendment rights conversations need to return to a point where common sense prevails, where public safety is prioritized, and where Americans can go to school, to the store and to a hometown Fourth of July parade without fear of dying in a mass shooting.”
Rotering met the moment. She consoled, rallied and mourned with her community. And then, shattered but resolute, she urged her constituents and fellow citizens to move forward and build a better future.
Rotering is a pillar of Highland Park. She grew up there, and her extended family has called it home for more than 85 years. She and her husband, Rob, raised their four sons in the city.
Her academic credentials are high-powered: an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford, a law degree from the University of Chicago and a Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University. Rotering specialized in healthcare fraud as a private-sector attorney and entered public service accidentally.
“I never expected to be mayor,” she told me, adding that her entry into local government was sparked by an effort to install a stop sign at a busy intersection.
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She joined Highland Park’s Environmental Commission in 2005 and was named to the Plan and Design Commission the following year. She won a seat on the City Council in 2009 and ran for and was elected mayor in 2011. The theme of her campaign was “Your Voice in City Hall.” She has been reelected three times.
Balanced budgets, public safety, economic development, environmental sustainability and the fostering of a vibrant community top her agenda. Expanding the city’s sidewalks has become a near obsession for practical and also symbolic reasons.
“Sidewalks are a big priority because that is how people connect. It seems simple but it’s really important. Sidewalks bring people together. They allow people to meet and visit their neighbors. They help build a community,” she told me.
She loves the problem-solving essence of a mayor’s work. “Mayors love to get stuff done, to make life safer and better for their communities,” she said.
Rotering told me she’s still motivated by the “fix it, don’t complain” ethos she inherited from her parents.
She enjoys collaborating with other municipal leaders in the greater Chicago area, arguing that public transit, flood mitigation, housing and environmental sustainability are broad challenges that require a thoughtful and coordinated regional response. She recently chaired the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus that brings together 275 municipalities, including the city of Chicago, with a combined population of more than 9 million people. She has also been president of the Northwest Municipal Conference and a board member of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
If one pillar of Rotering’s statesmanship is exemplary crisis response, and a second is stellar community stewardship, a third pillar centers on teaching.
She’s created a program for Highland Park third graders to participate in mock City Council meetings at City Hall. Students assume various leadership roles, craft agendas, speak to issues and forge compromises.
Rotering also encourages high school students to participate on the city’s 18 boards and commissions to get a tangible understanding of local government. All of Highland Park’s working groups include at least two high school students as informal members.
Rotering teaches the popular “Women and American Political Leadership” class at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. Each spring, about 35 undergraduates study academic literature on leadership. But more importantly, they hear from practitioners in legislative and executive jobs in state, local and federal government. The class examines the mechanics of running for office, how to weigh ethical challenges in government and lessons that can be learned from political defeat.
“The path to success may not be clear at the outset,” Rotering tells her students. “But that does not mean you stop, and that does not mean that you lose hope. It means you keep trying. If one door shuts, then you find another door. Staying nimble in your advocacy is critical.”
Rotering has lost several elections in her career, including races for Congress and Illinois attorney general, but she is convinced they have made her wiser, more resilient and more appreciative. Her successes and her setbacks have helped her grow into the kind of statesperson that all of our communities need.
John T. Shaw is director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. Shaw’s columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the last Monday of each month. His most recent book is “The Education of a Statesman: How Global Leaders Can Repair a Fractured World.”
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