After a heated campaign in which four challengers argued U.S. Rep. Danny Davis has been in Washington long enough, Democratic voters in Illinois’ 7th Congressional District on Tuesday had the final say on whether the longtime West Side politician should be the party’s nominee for a 15th term in November.
Two years after surviving his most competitive primary since being elected to Congress in 1996, the challengers of 82-year-old Davis included Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and three-time candidate Kina Collins.
Collins, a progressive activist, lost to Davis by 6 points in 2022, which helped inspire Conyears-Ervin, a one-time Davis ally, and newcomers Nikhil Bhatia and Kouri Marshall to enter this year’s race.
“The people are the ones who ultimately make all of the endorsements, and they will make their endorsement on Tuesday,” Davis said Saturday during an event at his Garfield Park campaign office, expressing confidence that he would emerge the winner.
Davis was among four congressional Democrats from the Chicago area who faced a primary challenge Tuesday.
In the 4th District, progressive Southwest Side Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García sought to fend off Ald. Raymond López, 15th, a more conservative member of the Chicago City Council. Rep. Sean Casten of Downers Grove faced two challengers, Mahnoor Ahmad of Oakbrook Terrace and Charles Hughes of Chicago, in the largely west and south suburban 6th District, and moderate Rep. Bill Foster of Naperville faced a challenge on the left from Naperville civil rights attorney Qaism Rashid in the far suburban 11th District.
Polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, and unofficial results were not available at press time.
Throughout the 7th District campaign, Davis argued that his seniority and the relationships he’s forged in Washington over nearly three decades are a boon for residents in the district, which stretches from the lakefront through western suburbs and takes in large swaths of the West and South sides of Chicago.
While Davis’ relatively narrow margin of victory in 2022 exposed potential vulnerability, Conyears-Ervin’s campaign was dogged by allegations of ethical misconduct at City Hall. The Board of Ethics in November found probable cause that Conyears-Ervin had violated the city ethics code by firing two employees who had complained about her conduct.
Davis, No. 24 on the congressional seniority list and a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, had the backing of much of the Democratic establishment in Chicago and Illinois, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
“If those individuals are willing to stand and say that you are doing and have done a good job, it matters not what anybody else says, it matters not what anybody else believes,” Davis said at a campaign event earlier this month.
Conyears-Ervin was backed by a number of politically active Black church leaders and by the powerful Chicago Teachers Union.
Sidestepping questions about the ethics allegations she’s faced, Conyears-Ervin, the wife of 28th Ward Ald. Jason Ervin, emphasized that she was “the only working mother” in the five-way race.
After backing Davis two years ago, Conyears-Ervin said she came to think it was time for a change in representation for the district.
“I think that we have tried to be patient with the incumbent. But as a mother of a 7-year-old daughter, raising her on the West Side of Chicago, our patience has run out,” Conyears-Ervin said in an interview earlier this month at her River North campaign office.
Collins fought an uphill battle in her third congressional bid, lacking the outside progressive backing that boosted her 2022 campaign. She also faced a late flurry of attack ads and mailers put out by a pro-Israel political action committee spurred to action by her pro-Palestinian stances.
As of Saturday, the United Democracy Project had reported spending more than $494,000 opposing Collins’ candidacy, federal campaign finance records show.
While the attacks have focused on Collins’ past calls to “defund the police,” she said it’s clear the group came after her because of her stance on the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza.
“It’s not about community safety, and it’s not about policing,” Collins said Friday after a candidate forum at the CTU’s Near West Side headquarters. “They don’t like our cease-fire stance, and they’re trying to sway voters in this district.”
In November, the winner of Tuesday’s race in the heavily Democratic district will face the lone name on the Republican primary ballot, perennial candidate Chad Koppie, who resides outside the district in far northwest suburban Gilberts.
4th Congressional District
In the neighboring 4th District, García faced his first contested Democratic primary since being elected to Congress in 2018 to succeed longtime Rep. Luis Gutiérrez.
Challenging the progressive incumbent from the right was López, who won a third term representing the 15th Ward in 2023.
Immigration and the ongoing migrant crisis were key issues for the race in the Latino-majority 4th Congressional District.
Both candidates are from the Southwest Side, which makes up a significant portion of the district, and each had eyes on the mayor’s office in last year’s election.
García finished fourth in the first round of voting, failing to advance to the April runoff. It was his second unsuccessful mayoral bid after losing to Rahm Emanuel in the 2015 runoff.
López ended up running to retain his City Council seat after announcing a mayoral bid.
An ally of Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor, García was elected to the City Council in 1986 and the Illinois Senate in 1992, becoming the first Mexican American Illinois state senator.
After losing his state Senate seat in a 1998 primary, García was elected to the Cook County Board in 2010, serving two terms before being all but anointed as Gutiérrez’s successor in Washington.
García, an ally of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in recent years has backed some younger progressive candidates in successful races for the state legislature and other offices, in some cases defeating more moderate incumbent Democrats.
The at-times bombastic López, a frequent Fox News guest known for his outspoken criticisms of mayors Lori Lightfoot and Brandon Johnson and their policies, has argued that his more moderate approach is in better line with voters in the district.
Redrawn after the 2020 census to include new suburban communities, the district now stretches from Chicago’s Southwest Side into Cicero and west as far as Oak Brook and Hinsdale in DuPage County, then north to Melrose Park and Northlake in suburban Cook County.
“I’m not coming in as a hyper-partisan politician like Chuy García,” López, who worked as a skycap for Southwest Airlines at Midway Airport before being elected to the City Council, said in an interview earlier this month. “For him, negotiating in the middle is still to the left of center within his own conference, let alone whatever other people want to talk about.”
García said he is “a trusted leader” throughout the district, even those who don’t share his progressive stances.
“Even some of the Republican mayors want to see me reelected because I’ve delivered,” he said.
There was no candidate on the Republican primary ballot in the heavily Democratic district, making Tuesday’s winner the likely victor in the November general election.
11th Congressional District
In the suburban and ex-urban 11th District, Foster, who often notes he’s the “only physicist in Congress,” faced progressive challenger Rashid, who previously ran unsuccessfully for public office in Virginia, including a congressional bid in 2020.
Like other progressives challenging incumbent Chicago-area Democrats this year, Rashid made calls for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war a central theme of his campaign.
Rashid also champions universal health care and other progressive causes.
Foster, who first came to Congress in 2008 through a special election to replace Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, has supported Israel’s right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack but also has said he’s “deeply alarmed by Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza and his disregard for the loss of civilian life.”
He’s called for a stop in fighting to allow the release of hostages and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
On health care, Foster has said universal coverage should be achieved through further expansion of the Affordable Care Act.
The outcome of Tuesday’s race could be an indication of how far to the left voters have shifted in parts of the outer ring of Chicago suburbs since the region’s days as a reliable GOP stronghold.
Foster, who had no primary opponent in 2022, defeated conservative Republican Catalina Lauf of Woodstock in that year’s general election by nearly 13 points.
After losing his seat for one term in the Tea Party wave of 2010, Foster, a former Fermilab scientist, won it back in 2012 and has held on since.
Redrawn after the 2020 census, the district now sweeps from the western part of Lake County as far west as Belvidere and south through McHenry, Kane and DuPage counties to Bolingbrook and Lemont, taking in parts of Aurora and Naperville.
In the November general election, the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary will take on the winner of a three-way race on the Republican primary ballot.
Those vying for the GOP nomination include Jerry Evans, O. Kent Mercado and Susan Hathaway-Altman.
Evans, of Warrenville, owns a Wheaton music school, and his campaign website describes him as “a Christian, husband, father, and political outsider.”
Evans finished second, behind Lauf, in the district’s 2022 six-way Republican primary with nearly 23% of the vote.
Also running again this year is Hathaway-Altman, of Geneva, who finished fourth with 12% of the vote. On her campaign website, Hathaway-Altman says she’s worked in “financial and travel related services” and if elected “will protect us from all of the external forces drawing us into Socialism, or worse, Communism and even a New World Order.”
Mercado, a podiatrist and attorney from Bartlett, has emphasized “kitchen table issues,” such as affordable health care.
6th Congressional District
Casten faced two challengers in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the largely suburban 6th Congressional District as he seeks a fourth term.
Casten held a massive fundraising advantage over both competitors, Ahmad and Hughes.
The former owner of a clean energy business, Casten has made taking on climate change a pillar of his tenure in Washington. He’s also campaigned heavily on protecting reproductive rights.
Ahmad is challenging Casten from the left. She supports a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, the Green New Deal and “Medicare for All.”
Hughes, from Chicago’s Garfield Ridge neighborhood near Midway Airport, was a precinct worker for former longtime U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski. He finished third in the 2022 Democratic primary, trailing Casten and Newman with just over 3% of the vote.
Casten, who unseated six-term Republican Rep. Peter Roskam in 2018 to take over the seat once held by conservative icon Henry Hyde, bested freshman U.S. Rep. Marie Newman of La Grange in the Democratic primary two years ago in the state’s only incumbent-on-incumbent Democratic congressional primary.
In the 2022 general election, Casten defeated Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau, a Republican who gained notoriety for challenging state COVID-19 mandates and aligned himself with the far-right group Awake Illinois.
The 6th District includes stretches from west suburban Lombard southeast to south suburban Tinley Park, taking in Chicago’s Beverly and Mount Greenwood neighborhoods and areas near Midway.
The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary will face Republican Niki Conforti Glen Ellyn in the Nov. 5 general election.
