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Jane Byrne served as 50th Mayor of Chicago, the only woman to hold the position. First entering politics as a volunteer for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential campaign, Byrne became head of the consumer affairs department of Chicago in 1968. Byrne campaigned to be Mayor of Chicago in the 1979 election against Michael Bilandic. Against the odds, Byrne won the election because the city blamed Mayor Bilandic for not being an effective enough leader to mobilize the city through a blizzard. Byrne’s term as mayor was characterized by her recognition of the LGBT community, moving into a housing project to show how dangerous it was, and banning unregistered handguns in Chicago. Byrne ran for mayor again in 1983 by initiating a write-in campaign, but lost to Harold Washington. Byrne ran for mayor three more times, but lost every election. Byrne died in 2014, after which the Circle Interchange was renamed the Jane Byrne Interchange in her honor.
Jane Byrne. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2015 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Byrne.