Tribune Editorial Board endorsements for the 2023 Chicago municipal election

Armando L. Sanchez / baiduhai
A row of voting booths at the Chicago Board of Elections Loop Super Site during early voting on Jan. 26, 2023 in Chicago.

PUBLISHED: February 14, 2023 at 8:00 AM CST | UPDATED: February 16, 2023 at 11:58 PM CST

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Chicago voters will make their picks this month for mayor, alderman, city treasurer, clerk and representatives on police district councils.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot will face eight challengers as she seeks reelection. If no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters will face off in a runoff election on April 4. Here’s a look at the nine candidates. To inform voters, the newsroom posed a series of questions to the candidates running for mayor of Chicago. See their answers here.

Voters in 11 of the city’s 50 wards — the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 17th, 27th, 28th, 32nd, 35th, 42nd, 44th, and 47th — have just one choice for alderman. City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and City Clerk Anna Valencia are also running unopposed.

Want to vote early? Here’s how and where to cast your ballot before Feb. 28.

Below are the baiduhai Editorial Board‘s endorsements for the Feb. 28 elections.

Mayor: Paul Vallas

Chicagoans tend to be weather-hardened stoics and scandal-scarred realists. Yet we’re mostly an upbeat crew, fiercely proud of our beautiful city. But if you read the most recent Harris Poll, you’ll see that most voters are profoundly pessimistic about postelection Chicago. When thinking about the key issues that face us, such as public safety, most of us apparently believe things are going to keep getting worse.

This is an aberration in terms of our collective historical trajectory, as cheered on by this newspaper for more than 175 years, and it cannot stand.

Demonstrably, Chicago is a city in need of a turnaround, and, in Paul Vallas, we’re endorsing a smart, passionate and experienced candidate for mayor who long has specialized in doing precisely that.

City Council

The faces of Chicago’s City Council are changing. Around a quarter of Chicago’s 50 wards will see new representation following an unusually large number of aldermanic retirements and resignations.

These on-the-ground positions are vital to the city and the relatively small size of the electorate in each ward means that each vote profoundly matters. These races can turn on just a few hundred votes.

1st Ward: Stephen “Andy” Schneider

4th Ward: Lamont Robinson

5th Ward: Renita Ward

6th Ward: William Hall

8th Ward: Linda Hudson

9th Ward: Anthony Beale

10th Ward: Óscar Sanchez

11th Ward: Nicole Lee

12th Ward: Anabel Abarca

13th Ward: Paul Bruton

14th Ward: Jeylu Gutierrez

15th Ward: Raymond Lopez