After a heated campaign in which four challengers argued U.S. Rep. Danny Davis has been in Washington long enough, the veteran West Side politician emerged victorious in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, setting him up for a likely general election win in November and a 15th term representing Illinois’ 7th Congressional District.
The Associated Press called the race for Davis, who was first elected to Congress in 1996, about an hour after polls closed.
“This election is over and the victory belongs to the people,” Davis declared at his election night party at the Westside Baptist Ministers Conference.
Two years after surviving the most competitive primary of his congressional career, Davis easily defeated a field of rivals that included Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and third-time opponent Kina Collins.
With about three-fourths of the vote counted, Davis led with 53% over Conyears-Ervin’s 22% and Collins’ 18%, according to unofficial results.
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. Bhatia and Marshall had collected only a small share of the vote, according to unofficial results.
Davis was among four congressional Democrats from the Chicago area to easily hold off primary challenges Tuesday.
Progressive Southwest Side Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García defeated Ald. Raymond López, 15th, a more conservative member of the Chicago City Council, in the 4th District, and Rep. Sean Casten of Downers Grove turned back two challengers in the largely west and south suburban 6th District, according to the AP.
Moderate Rep. Bill Foster of Naperville defeated Naperville civil rights attorney Qaism Rashid in the suburban 11th District, according to the AP.
Throughout his 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.
In his trademark booming bass voice, Davis in his victory speech Tuesday tweaked “the prognosticators” who suggested he could lose the primary.
“All of those who thought my community wouldn’t remember the work we’ve done all of my adult life? I am so affirmed,” he said.
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.
While some observers saw those endorsements as a sign of Davis’ reelection struggles, the congressman said they were merely reciprocating his support for them.
“Let me tell you, I helped make the big guns,” he said. “I would expect the big guns to come in.”
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.
On Tuesday, Conyears-Ervin arrived at her campaign party at Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen around 8:20 p.m. to a standing ovation from her supporters. With her husband at her side, she congratulated Davis.
“For me to be able to fight for working families, to raise issues that have never been raised, my heart is full,” she told the crowd.
Conyears-Ervin repeatedly referenced her 7-year-old daughter in her speech, saying, “I won this morning when that 7-year-old girl saw a Black woman on the ballot for United States Congress.”
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.
Collins, who arrived at her election night party about an hour after the race had been called for Davis, encouraged her supporters to not “stop doing the work.” But she didn’t address the question of whether she’d run again.
“Maybe I’m not the right candidate for this seat, but this is the right time,” she said.
Collins said forces working against her this cycle included “voter apathy” that led to low turnout.
In November, Davis will defend his seat in the heavily Democratic district against the lone name on Tuesday’s Republican primary ballot, perennial candidate Chad Koppie, who resides outside the district in far northwest suburban Gilberts.
Davis would not say whether this would be his final term, saying there were several younger state lawmakers that he could see himself supporting in future elections. However, he said he can do more for his community given his Congressional experience than anybody.
“If you know how to do it and you know how to get it done, than it’s almost a dereliction of duty not to serve,” he said.
4th Congressional District
In the 4th District, García won 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.
With 59% of the vote counted, Garcia had 69% to 31% for Lopez, according to unofficial results.
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.
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, 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.
In his victory speech, Garcia stressed the need for stricter gun control, including a ban on assault weapons, and for “fixing our broken immigration system.”
He said people in this country should be able to “live with peace of mind, whether they came 35 years ago or only a few weeks ago.”
There was no candidate on the Republican primary ballot in the largely Democratic district, making García the probable victor in November.
11th Congressional District
In the suburban and exurban 11th District, Foster, who often notes he’s the “only physicist in Congress,” defeated progressive challenger Rashid, who previously ran unsuccessfully for public office in Virginia, including a congressional bid in 2020.
With 84% of the vote counted, Foster had 77% to 23% for Rashid, according to unofficial results.
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.
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.
“While we celebrate tonight’s victory, we have no time to waste to get back to work, especially with so much at stake for our nation,” Foster said in a statement. “Republicans are gearing up to target the district once again so they can pass a nationwide abortion ban, block sensible gun safety legislation, gut the ACA, pollute the environment and roll back so much of the progress we’ve made over the past few years.”
In the November general election, Foster will take on Jerry Evans, whom the AP declared 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.
With 84% of the vote counted, Evans led with 51%, Hathaway-Altman’s 37% and Mercado’s 12%, according to unofficial results.
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 was 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 easily dispatched Mahnoor Ahmad of Oakbrook Terrace and Charles Hughes of Chicago in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the largely suburban 6th District as he seeks a fourth term.
With 75% of the vote counted, Casten led with 77% of the vote over Ahmad, with 14%, and Hughes, with 9%, according to unofficial results.
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 challenged 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.
Casten will face Republican Niki Conforti of Glen Ellyn in the Nov. 5 general election.
