CHICAGO on Tuesday became the biggest U.S. city to elect a black woman its mayor, as voters put their faith in an openly-gay political novice to tackle difficult problems of economic inequality and gun violence.

Lori Lightfoot, a 56-year-old former federal prosecutor and practicing lawyer who has never before held elected office, won the Midwestern city’s mayoral race in a lopsided victory.

She beat out Toni Preckwinkle, a career politician who is also black, by a wide margin of 74 to 26 percent with most ballots counted.

“Today, you did more than make history, you created a movement for change,” she told a cheering crowd.

Lightfoot will become Chicago’s first openly gay mayor as well as the first African America woman to hold the post. Since 1837, Chicago voters have elected only one black mayor and one female mayor.

Her ascendancy to the top of Chicago government was a stunning development in a city where insider deals and entrenched party politics held sway for decades.

“It is a city-wide rejection of the Chicago political establishment at the mayoral level,” Evan McKenzie, political science professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said.

Preckwinkle, the chief executive of Cook County in which Chicago is located, has for decades held various local elected offices, which analysts said hurt her in an election in which voters were looking to shake up city hall.

Among the top issues were the high level of gun violence that claims more lives than in other major American cities, and years of political corruption.

(SD-Agencies)