The four main candidates in the 7th Congressional District primary made a case for themselves in a West Side forum earlier this month. They had two-and-a-half minutes each to do so.
“I feel like I’m on a speed date this evening,” said Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, one of four candidates challenging longtime incumbent Danny Davis.
Davis said that seniority in Congress has its perks, noting that he is the 24th longest serving member of the current Congress.
“My opponents don’t seem to understand how this business works,” Davis told the Wednesday Journal in a telephone interview, noting that if Democrats regain the majority of the House of Representatives, he would likely chair the Worker and Family Support subcommittee of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
Davis said that his health is decent and his mind his sharp.
“My mind is as sharp, as sharp as it’s ever been,” Davis said. “I’ve got great thinking capacity; I have a tremendous knowledge base. I understand the system.”
And if he doesn’t move quite as quickly as he once did that’s not a requirement for the job.
“I’m not running to be part of the relay team in a track meet, I’m not running to be the quarterback for the Bears, or a running back, that’s not why I’m running,” Davis said adding that he is running for the same reason he ran for office decades ago, to make the world a better place in which to live.
Davis, 82, has served in Congress for 28 years and has served in an elected office for the past 45 years. Before his Congressional election in 1996, Davis served as the alderman of the 29th ward from 1979 to 1990. That year, he became a commissioner of Cook County Board and stayed until 1996. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Davis was a leader of independent Black progressive politics on the west side of Chicago. Although he fought the city’s Democratic machine, his opponents now say it is time for younger, more vigorous representation in Congress.
Two years ago, Davis won a close primary race receiving only 51.9% of the vote against challenger Kina Collins and one other opponent. Collins received 45.7% of the vote and is back this year making her third attempt to unseat Davis. Two years ago, Collins received nearly 74% of the vote in Oak Park and nearly 68% of the vote in River Forest, showing Davis’s weakness in the villages.
Collins told Wednesday Journal that she thinks that the suburbs, and especially Oak Park, can be the difference this time around in the district that runs from downtown Chicago west to Tri State Tollway and also includes part of the south side of Chicago.
“I think that Oak Park might deliver the race depending on how things pan out in Chicago,” Collins told Growing Community Media, parent company of Austin Weekly News, in a brief interview after her appearance at the candidate forum. “The suburbs are going to be key part to a pathway to victory.”
Conyears-Ervin is also a strong challenger to Davis. She has been the Chicago City Treasurer since 2019 and before that was a state representative. She is married to 28th ward alderman Jason Ervin and recently was endorsed by the powerful Chicago Teachers Union.
“Working families believe that Washington, D.C. is broken, and they are looking for someone who is not only going to say what they are going to do but someone who has a proven track record,” Conyears-Ervin said at the candidate forum. “I am that person.”
While Davis, Conyears-Ervin and Collins are seen as the three main candidates, Kouri Marshall, a 41-year-old who worked on the Obama campaign and now serves as the director of state and local public policy for a trade group, and math teacher Nikhil Bhatia, are also in the race.
Marshall said that his background and experience equip him to work across the aisle noting that he can work with all sorts of people. Marshall pointed out that he was one of only eight Black students at Eureka College when he was elected as the school’s first Black Homecoming King.
Marshall made an oblique reference to ethical issues that Conyears-Ervin has been facing and that have been alleged against Davis.
“I also believe that it’s possible to send a leader from the Illinois 7th Congressional District, a new leader who is ethical in his deeds when the lights are on and when they are off,” Marshall said.
The Chicago Ethics Board determined that Conyears-Ervin fired two employees, including her chief of staff, in retaliation for complaining that they were asked to do personal work for Conyears-Ervin on city time. Davis is facing a complaint that he used congressional funds to further his campaign.
In a telephone interview Davis told GCM that there is nothing to the allegation that was reported by The Intercept in January.
“Everything that we sent out was approved by the Franking Committee, it was approved by the ethics committee, it was fact checked, otherwise we could not have sent it out,” Davis said.
