Mayor Lightfoot says the ‘destiny’ of Black Chicagoans is at stake in the 2023 election. But can she win their votes?

CHICAGO — At a South Side diner one recent morning, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot served up a cautionary tale about what might happen if Black voters don’t unite behind her reelection bid.

She told the mostly Black crowd at Huddle House on Stony Island Avenue that the city’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, spent years feuding with a “racist mob in City Council.” When he died in office in 1987, they voted to replace him with Ald. Eugene Sawyer, who they “thought they could control,” but two years later they “dropped him like a bad habit” and “went all in for (Richard M.) Daley,” she said.

The result? Daley’s long tenure at City Hall and “30 years of people struggling,” Lightfoot said.

“Not having the resources and the control of the city government left Black and brown Chicago the worse for it,” Lightfoot said. “So when you think about what’s up on the ballot, in February of next year, our destiny is on the ballot.”

Lightfoot’s comments during a petition kickoff event led to criticism from some who said she had distorted history and disrespected the memory of Sawyer, whose son is running against her. But it also underscored the mayor’s strategy in the 2023 mayoral campaign as her political base of support has shifted from the lakefront to the South and West sides, creating a unique dynamic for Lightfoot as she seeks a second term.

In the first round of the 2019