IL-07: On Monday, violence-prevention advocate Kina Collins announced that she would challenge 12-term Rep. Danny Davis in the primary for Illinois’ safely blue 7th District, which is located in Chicago and includes the city’s West Side and downtown neighborhoods. Collins argued that the seat has been neglected, telling Politico, “We have entire rows of neighborhoods full of abandoned buildings and now abandoned schools. There’s a huge equity issue in the district that we need to address.”
Davis has never had to worry much about primary challengers, but it’s always anyone’s guess whether he’ll actually run for re-election. In large part that’s because Davis, who will be 79 on Election Day, has tried to escape the House no fewer than five times during his long career.
In 2006, the congressman was passed over for a vacancy on the Cook County Board of Commissioners when Democratic leaders chose Todd Stroger to replace his father, John Stroger, who’s suffered a stroke while seeking re-election as board president. Two years later, after Barack Obama was elected president, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich reportedly offered to appoint Davis to Obama's Senate seat, but Davis claims he turned down the opportunity to avoid getting tainted by Blago's growing aura of corruption. (Blagojevich was, of course, removed from office and is serving a 14-year prison sentence.)
Davis then considered a Senate bid himself in the 2010 cycle but ultimately chose not to run. Instead, he filed for the job he'd missed out on a few years earlier, Cook County president, but ultimately abandoned the idea and sought re-election. Then, in 2011, he ran for mayor of Chicago ... but dropped out in favor of former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, who got torched by Rahm Emanuel and came in fourth with just 9% of the vote.
There were again questions in 2015 whether Davis would run for re-election, and a few local Democrats showed interest in campaigning to succeed him. However, the congressman ended up seeking another term and winning without any trouble.
Davis didn’t seem to show any indecision about running once more last cycle, though maybe he should have. Just ahead of primary day, Davis told the far-right Daily Caller that he had "no problems" with Louis Farrakhan and his extreme anti-Semitism, saying, “The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth.”
Davis then released a statement that didn't mention Farrakhan and declared that the Daily Caller had "attempted to impugn my character, and more significantly divide and separate African Americans and Jewish Americans, by portraying me as sympathetic to anti-Semitic views." However, Davis didn't deny giving an interview to the Daily Caller or suggest that it had altered any quotes attributed to him.
A few days later, Davis released a second statement declaring, "Let me be clear: I reject, condemn and oppose Minister Farrakhan's views and remarks regarding the Jewish people and the Jewish religion." The congressman went on to say of his first statement, "There have been attempts to question my commitment to these principles because I did not specifically single out the views and remarks of Minister Louis Farrakhan in that statement." The story didn’t stop Davis from winning renomination with 74% of the vote against a little-known and underfunded foe.
If Davis does run again, it remains to be seen whether Collins can give him a tougher challenge. Collins does appear to have some political connections: Last year, she helped write a successful bill to establish the Illinois Council on Women and Girls, a group whose stated mission is advising the governor on issues impacting Illinois women and girls. She also served as a campaign staffer to the man that council now advises, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
But that involvement did not last. Collins made news last February when she quit her job with Pritzker after a recording of a 2008 call between Blagojevich and Pritzker surfaced in which Pritzker called Secretary of State Jesse White the “least offensive” black candidate who could replace Obama in the Senate. The blowup, however, didn’t stop Pritzker, who was backed by much of the state’s powerful party establishment, from winning the primary and later the general election.