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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

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Laurie Lightfoot became mayor of Chicago. One year ago this week, her tenure began with a

acrimonious teacher strike, and it's ended with an epic pandemic. I sat down with her last week to talk about this baptism of fire,

where she thinks the virus is going and how she plans to open up her city, plus her own remarkable story, her journey from a small town in Ohio,

the granddaughter of a sharecropper, to become a prosecutor, and ultimately a big city mayor. And we talked about her status as America's first gay woman of color to lead a major American city. And here's that conversation.

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Mayor, how are you? I'm doing well on you. Good. Good to see you.

So next week, May 20th, one year in office, hell of a baptism you've had here. I mean, you couldn't have imagined when you took that oath of office in Millennium Park a year ago that this is how you'd be marking your first anniversary in office.

How are you personally holding up? What is the emotional toll associated with having a lead a city through this kind of catastrophe?

Well, I mean, as you might imagine, it ebs and it flows. My personality is one where I don't get too high and I don't get too low. But certainly, you know, there are times when I feel like I'm I've reached max and capacity. And so I try to take some time for myself every day. Usually it's early in the morning.

I'm an early riser. So I just kind of take some time to kind of slowly move into the day, kind of set myself emotionally. And then I definitely do it every night before I go to bed. Sometimes I'm so tired. I don't need to.

I just fall asleep, but you know, there's a there's an expression in the church that I grew up in about laying your burdens down. So what I try to do every night is just kind of let the what the burdens of the day to the side because they're going to be there to the next day.

I don't need to wrestle with them all night long. You know, easier said than done, of course. Yeah, that's a great quality. I need to take some lessons from you on that. I've never quite mastered that. But that is it's important.

How's your family doing you and your wife Amy have a 12 year old Vivian 12 year olds are not necessarily all that keen on being penned up inside. How's she doing?

She's she's doing fine. You know, she starts her day off every morning with a zoom conference call from her teacher with her classmates. So when I'm running out the door in the morning, she's engaged in whatever the days events are.

And then I come home at night and she and her she is discovered fortnight. So that's like the daily obsession between her and varying groups of of friends. But you know, it's hard. I mean, this is the time where she'd be out running tracks is an athletic kid. She missed a lot of her basketball season because he had a broken leg and so was very looking forward to track and then COVID hit.

So we tried to kind of get that as much exercise as we can. We're fortunate enough to have a yard. So we we do that. But it's not the same. And it's not the same of, you know, being with your classmates every day and that kind of intimacy that close proximity.

Right. But these are kids that have grown up in the digital age with all these devices. So it's probably a little bit different than when you and I were growing up.

Speaking of the digital age, you become quite the sensation online here. You're a you're a viral sensation. You've been doing, you know, you've done all these videos about how to occupy yourself at home. You've done, I guess parody of singing. You're baking.

You've done a lot of some some crazy things that have really caught on with people. How how have you eased into the role of a viral star?

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