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Lightfoot has many disagreements with Donald Trump but had "a very good conversation" with his daughter, she said.
Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot, who's no fan of Donald Trump, nonetheless met with Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and adviser, during a visit to Washington, D.C., this week.
Lightfoot, the first LGBTQ person and first Black woman to be elected mayor of Chicago, spoke with Ivanka Trump at the White House Tuesday. They had "a very good conversation," Lightfoot told the Chicago Tribune.
Ivanka Trump "clearly knows a lot about Chicago," Lightfoot said, and "referenced a couple local institutions that are doing, I think, great work when it comes to workforce development but also criminal justice reform" -- Hope Academy and the University of Chicago Crime Lab. They also talked about vocational education, economic revitalization, parole reform, and crime prevention, according to a statement from the White House.
Lightfoot was not scheduled to meet with Donald Trump -- who congratulated her by phone after her election last month, despite have disparaged Chicago frequently during his presidential campaign -- but said she is open to doing so. "Obviously his values are not my values on a range of different issues but ... Chicago has a lot of great needs," Lightfoot told the Tribune. Lightfoot is a Democrat, although Chicago city elections are officially nonpartisan.
The mayor-elect also met Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then with other Democratic House leaders, James Clyburn and Steny Hoyer, about improvements for Chicago's mass transit system. She was set to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus today and the Illinois congressional delegation Thursday.
She and Pelosi discussed the role of mayors, she said, as Pelosi's father and brother both served as mayor of Baltimore. "People want to know who their mayor is," Lightfoot said. "They want to feel like there's a personal connection and that the mayor is present and visible in communities."
She also noted seeing a portrait of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and an inspiration to Lightfoot, on her way to meet with Pelosi. "I thought it was more than a coincidence that the route I took into this building brought me to this incredible, beautiful, and poignant painting," she said.
Lightfoot, a lesbian, will be sworn in May 20, making Chicago the largest city in the nation ever to have an out LGBTQ mayor. It is the third largest city in the U.S.
