Editor’s note: Ahead of the March 17 primary, Growing Community Media is profiling the candidates running in the 7th congressional district in Illinois. Whoever wins the November election will succeed Rep. Danny Davis, who is retiring after nearly 30 years in the position. This week, GCM reported on Melissa Conyears-Ervin.
After running against Rep. Danny Davis in 2024, City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin has once again thrown her hat in the ring for 7th district Congress, this time, to fight the Trump administration.
“I plan to show Donald Trump that we are not going to take him lying down. What he is doing to everyday citizens is un-American, and it is unacceptable,” Conyears-Ervin said.
As treasurer, Conyears-Ervin made “a decision, with the mindset of the residents of Chicago that elected me, that we will not invest in the authoritarian regime of Donald Trump.” So, as of last November, Chicago no longer invests in any U.S. treasuries, which help raise the money needed to operate the federal government.
Within the first year or so as treasurer, Conyears-Ervin divested from fossil fuel companies — one of her goals if she’s elected to Congress. In her current role, she’s also ensured that over half of Chicago’s trades go through minority-owned firms and prioritizes building generational wealth for Chicagoans.
“No other treasurer — not only in Chicago, but we believe anywhere across the country — has done a financial empowerment program like I have,” Conyears-Ervin said. “We’re bringing this to the people. I’m out in the community bringing these resources.”
One of these programs is Building Wealth Today for Tomorrow, a free financial literacy program. About 7,000 people came to the program’s annual summit last year to learn how to invest in themselves, purchase their own homes, and access capital to start their own businesses.
“We have firsthand experiences, where people are walking away from our community events with pre-approvals, the ability to increase their credit scores, to be able to start saving and learning how to save so that they can open their own business, so that they can purchase their own home, so that they can think about retirement,” she said.
Conyears-Ervin said, if elected, she’d continue advocating for financial empowerment in Congress by expanding pathways for small business growth, apprenticeships, local manufacturing, lower costs, higher wages and home ownership.
“I watched my single mother move her three kids from staying with family in Englewood to purchasing her own home in Austin,” she said, “and how purchasing her own home really changed the trajectory for our family.”
Conyears-Ervin grew up in Englewood and was raised on the West Side. She went to Chicago Public Schools and was the first in her family to go to college, getting her MBA from Roosevelt University.
For nearly 20 years, Conyears-Ervin worked at management and executive levels at Allstate, where she catered to the customer experience. Allstate also sparked Conyears-Ervin’s interest in public service, as it offered a program where its executives spent time helping with a nonprofit. For Conyears-Ervin, that was Breakthrough Urban Ministries in Garfield Park, where she now lives.
“That experience was very life changing,” she said of working with the nonprofit that helps impoverished locals. “And when the opportunity came about for me to run for Illinois State Representative, I made one of the best decisions I could have made, to leave corporate America to work for my community.”
As state representative, Conyears-Ervin helped pass bills to provide funding for Chicago Public Schools and affordable childcare. She was chief sponsor of the legislation that restored childcare assistance that was cut for 15,000 families when Bruce Rauner was Illinois governor.
“It is very difficult to pass meaningful legislation, especially being a freshman legislator,” Conyears-Ervin said. She also helped start the Democratic Women’s Caucus, which she said is primarily made up of white women, and was one of its first co-chairs.
“I’ve always been a person who builds bridges. I’m a person who unifies,” Conyears-Ervin said. The caucus helped pass legislation that created a lactation room at the state capital, said Conyears-Ervin, who was a nursing mother at the time.
If elected, Conyears-Ervin said she would fight for legislation that protects Medicaid and Medicare, lowers drug prices, expands mental health care and community clinics, and invests in equitable maternal and reproductive care.
“I plan to go to Washington, D.C. to fight — not only for my sister, who is disabled and a senior who relies on government Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP — but for all the seniors, children and the disabled, those who are less fortunate, who need and deserve this representation,” said Conyears-Ervin, who plans to restore such funding if elected.
When it comes to affordability and taxes, Conyears-Ervin said she’ll close loopholes to restore income tax rates.
“Rich people, unfortunately, they cheat. The rich need to pay their fair share,” Conyears-Ervin said. “We have so much work to do for equity, to break the systemic racism, the barriers that exist for our residents across this district. I am the one person in this race that has a history with my support that I’ve received in the past from labor, from business, all across this district. It is that unity that we’re going to need to really build up our communities in this district.”
Conyears-Ervin said she’d represent the array of voices in the wide-ranging 7th district by continuing the work she’s already done: “It’s who I am. It’s easy for me. It’s what I do now.”
Conyears-Ervin has been endorsed by Aldermen Monique Scott of the 24th Ward and Chris Taliaferro of the 29th Ward, Cook County Commissioner Michael Scott Jr., and about 75 faith leaders.
Other Democratic candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring for Davis’s seat include Richard Boykin, Kina Collins, David Elrich, Anthony Driver Jr., Dr. Thomas Fisher, La Shawn Ford, Jason Friedman, Rory Hoskins, Anabel Mendoza, Jazmin Robinson, Reed Showalter, and Felix Tello. Republican candidates are Chad Koppie and Patricia Easley.
Accusations of mismanaged money
In 2024, the Chicago Board of Ethics fined Melissa Conyears-Ervin $70,000 for over a dozen violations of the city’s ethics ordinance, including unauthorized use of city property and prohibited political activity. The fine was allegedly because Conyears-Ervin hosted prayer services with city resources.
“Those allegations that were frivolous. At the end of the day, what the Board of Ethics found is that I was attending church. They fined me for attending church as a political figure,” Conyears-Ervin said. She said she would’ve beaten the case but didn’t have the resources to pay legal fees. “From a monetary perspective, it was easier for me to just settle and get it behind me.”
In 2020, a city lawsuit was settled involving two employees whom Conyears-Ervin fired. They alleged she used her assistant to run personal errands and that she asked BMO Harris Bank to offer a mortgage to the owner of a church where her husband, Ald. Jason Ervin of the 28th Ward, rented office space. Conyears-Ervin has publicly denied these accusations.
