Elkhart Mayor Rod Roberson’s communications director says she was fired for her TikToks about state and national politics.
Corinne Straight had worked as the Democratic mayor’s communications director for three years. As the election season heated up, she started posting videos on TikTok advocating progressive policies on everything from immigration and transgender rights to abortion and education funding, criticizing Donald Trump and other national and state Republican candidates.
Her posts about the challenges of being blue in a red state, for which she coined the term “bluesier,” quickly attracted more than 25,000 followers, some from Michiana who didn’t even realize she was local.
But on Friday Straight posted that Roberson, despite being a Democrat, had fired her over those TikToks. She said, “their fear of upsetting Indiana’s Republican establishment was too much.”
Roberson declined WVPE’s interview request but issued a statement thanking her for her service and wishing her well.
On TikTok she has called Republican Lieutenant Governor-elect Micah Beckwith a misogynist and a white supremacist.
And Straight is showing no signs of slowing down. She’s launched a bluesiers.com website, where she’s trying to energize Democrats and selling t-shirts and mugs that say, “Jezebel spirit.”
That stems from when Beckwith, a self-described Christian nationalist, compared Indiana Democrats to the “Jezebel spirit,” a term referencing a demonic woman in the Bible named Jezebel who was sexually immoral and did evil things.
Straight vowed to keep a close eye on the upcoming Indiana General Assembly in January. On TikTok she described a meeting with her state representative from Elkhart, Republican Doug Miller, talking about a planned Republican bill to remove income caps for families receiving private school vouchers.
"It is almost a foregone conclusion that he will vote in favor of universal school choice," she said. "But at least he knows who I am and he knows where I stand now, and that definitely won't be the last time I'll be chatting with him."
