Chicago City Wire

Radio host Clay Travis took to using the language of identity politics to describe Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s loss in the Feb. 28 election.

“Losing a mayor’s race 84-16 makes this the worst electoral loss for a black lesbian mayor in American history. Historic moment for diversity and inclusion. That’s how identity politics works, right?" Travis, who is also a lawyer and author, said on Twitter.

Lightfoot is well known for race-baiting.

Lightfoot called radio host Dan Proft a racist for highlighting Chicagoland crime after Proft aired an ad through his People Who Play by The Rules PAC which showed three criminals attack a woman in broad daylight.

The problem with those accusations of “racism”? The race of the perpetrators in the attack could not be determined as the criminals were wearing masks and long sleeve shirts.

Still, Lightfoot held onto the allegation and succeeded in having the ad removed from TV stations.

She later accused Proft of “darkening” her skin in another advertisement – something Proft vehemently denied and produced a side by side comparison showing the video had not been altered.

Fellow Democrat State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford (D-Chicago) excoriated Lightfoot in that instance for embracing colorism.

“I don't need anybody saying the darker you look, the more dangerous you are,” Ford told Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer.  

“That's bad. And so I find it offensive that we focus on saying that that's an ugly vision of a person because that person is darker.”

Ford said Lightfoot’s claims were ludicrous, adding “I don't see how being darker makes the Mayor of the city of Chicago threatening to white suburbia."

He said such politicking is regressive.

"I find…it takes us back,” Ford said.

“You know, in America where you have images of black people that have, you know…people have been discriminated because of darker skin, and so even if you had intentions on whatever, you pick your battles, and to say that because you made me [Lightfoot] darker, that means 'I'm scary to white people.' That’s not right. And so what we need to do is embrace all colors."

Perhaps most infamously, Lightfoot held a press conference in 2021 – the anniversary of her two year inauguration – in which she only called on minority reporters.

Lightfoot took to Twitter to decry the "whiteness" of journalists.

"I ran to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn't just in City Hall. It's a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American,” she said.

NBC Chicago reporter Mary Ann Ahern outed the mayor for basing the decision to speak to reporters based on the color of their skin alone.

“As @chicagosmayor reaches her two year midway point as mayor, her spokeswoman says Lightfoot is granting 1 on 1 interviews - only to Black or Brown journalists,” NBC News journalist Mary Ann Ahern tweeted.

At the time, Gregory Pratt, a Latino reporter for the Chicago Tribune, chose not to interview Lightfoot.

“I asked the mayor’s office to lift its condition on others and when they said no, we respectfully canceled. Politicians don’t get to choose who covers them,” he said.