Early voting for the Illinois primary election is underway, with just two weeks away from Election Day. In the 7th Congressional District, one of the most consequential races in the March 17 primary, 15 candidates are vying for the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, who announced his retirement last year.
Because voters are taking every opportunity they can to hear from the candidates, hundreds of community members packed into Alt Space Chicago, an arts nonprofit housed in the former Austin Bank building, for a recent forum involving some of the Democratic candidates in the race.
Tye Moores, who grew up in Austin, attended the forum to support, volunteer, and listen to the candidates. Although she no longer lives on the West Side, she plans to apply what she learned to create an election voter guide and distribute it to family and friends, many of whom still live in the 7th District.
“I text it to my friends before voting happens, I post it on social media, and share it with all of the people,” Moores explained, referring to her voter’s guide. “A lot of the people in my generation, they care about these things, but they get so overwhelmed: ‘Like, I don’t know any information about this.’ I do my due diligence with researching, because I feel like in our community it’s a duty.”’
The Chicago Black Voter Project hosted the forum in partnership with dozens of community-based organizations, including the Westside Justice Center (WJC), Westside Rising, 290 Independent Political Organization, E.A.T. (Equity and Transformation), Black Roots Alliance, and more.
There were five Black Democratic congressional candidates in attendance for the forum: Illinois State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford (D-8), former Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, University of Chicago Medical Center emergency physician Thomas Fisher, SEIU executive director Anthony Driver Jr., and organizer Kina Collins.
Other Democratic candidates present for the forum include University of Illinois-Chicago adjunct lecturer David Ehrlich, immigrant rights organizer Anabel Mendoza, corporate human resources worker Jazmin Robinson, former Federal Trade Commission attorney Reed Showalter, and tech engineer Felix Tello.
Friedman Properties owner and real-estate giant Jason Friedman, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, and Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins did not attend. A spokesperson for Friedman said he had a long-standing scheduling conflict, and a spokesperson for Conyears-Ervin cited a prior commitment. Hoskins had a last-minute conflict and couldn’t attend, his campaign manager said.
The forum, moderated by WJC executive director Tanya Woods, remained relatively calm until a fiery exchange between Collins and Ford occurred. Collins, while responding to a question about how she’d protect the Pretrial Fairness Act if elected to Congress, called Ford out for being endorsed by the city’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).
“The bigger issue that I have listening up here is that one of the biggest oppositions to the SAFE-T Act was the Fraternal Order of Police. The same Fraternal Order of Police that has Oath Keepers in there,” Collins said. “Rep. Ford, you’re endorsed by the FOP, so you can’t take credit when you are working in tandem with the people who are trying to tear it down.”
Ford addressed Collins’s comments during the next question, a question about Medicare for all.
“There are a lot of good cops out there that should be supported as well. There are cases that I gotta prove that I stand for police accountability that I’ve never seen or heard her stand for,” Ford said, referring to Collins. “When Laquan McDonald got shot and assassinated in Chicago, who stood up for a recall of Rahm Emanuel, who stood up to make sure that the police were held accountable? Me. What guides me is the people. Money can’t buy me.”
In a follow-up interview with The TRiiBE, Ford confirmed he received the FOP’s endorsement in the race.
“I’m a Black man who’s had police pull guns on me. I have been wrongfully accused of things myself. I have family members who have been wrongfully accused and incarcerated by the Chicago police and other police departments. So to think that an endorsement means I endorse their work is not true,” Ford said, referring to the FOP. “The endorsement means that I will hold them accountable.”
Candidates answered a range of questions from event organizers about their priorities if elected, as well as affordable housing, the Pretrial Fairness Act, health care, labor organizing, and more.
“It really was a wonderful event, and the turnout was excellent, because on a Thursday night on the West Side, baby, you have to drag some people,” said Angelique Orr, executive director for Westside Rising.
“I do think we have more work to do with awareness, because I’m sure people are not aware that this is the midterm elections. It’s probably more important than the main election [Presidential election]. This is the time when thousands of seats across the United States are up for reelection. So if we just get out and vote, we can clear the slate, and we can switch things immediately. I think we need to know that here in Chicago,” Orr continued.
Below are candidate’s stances on affordable housing and health care. In addition, they also shared their priorities for the first 100 days in office and how they intend to protect the Pretrial Fairness Act.
Responses have been condensed and edited for clarity.
What are your top three priorities in your first 100 days in office, and how will those priorities materially improve conditions for working-class communities in Chicago?
Richard Boykin: I want to take back our tariff authority [in Congress]. The second thing I would do is make sure we pass the Affordable Care Act subsidies. This will help bring down health care costs and expand access to health care. The third thing I would do is make sure we repeal the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits.
Kina Collins: In my first 100 days, one of my priorities is to use my office as a hub for rapid response and mutual aid from Westchester to West Englewood. Our office will be used for direct-action and voter-rights training. Secondly, I want to put together a life expectancy task force. Lastly, I want a protection act introduced on the House floor so that the [Trump] administration can no longer retaliate against cities politically just because we don’t agree with them.
Anthony Driver Jr: My first three priorities would be number one, fighting for Medicare for all. The second thing is affordability; people can’t afford to live a happy, healthy, thriving life in this economy. We need to tap the cost of childcare at 7%. The third thing is gun violence. That is what drove me to this work.
Dr. Thomas Fisher: The first thing is to stop the bleeding. Health care is in crisis, and several issues need to be resolved immediately. We have a housing crisis in West Garfield Park and Englewood. Folks are spending 60% of their income on rent, and that’s unsustainable. There’s a bill that clears the red tape and allows us to build more housing immediately with special funding. The third thing I’ll do is reclaim the $23 billion that is going to ICE in order to defund and abolish that organization.
Rep. La Shawn K. Ford: I will meet with community-based organizations, business communities, and child care providers. On day one, I’m going to start a task force for our seniors. Seniors are living on poverty wages. We will immediately form a task force to protect our seniors’ Medicare and make sure that we raise their Social Security benefits. You have to make relationships before you can get anything done, and that’s what I’ll be doing in my first 100 days, so that the 7th congressional district can be united and known in Washington.
Anabel Mendoza: I would open up at least two congressional offices, one on the West Side and one on the South Side. I want to make sure constituents have access to me. The second thing is making sure I hire a team that reflects the diversity of this district. I would work with key congressional offices to make sure that I’m nominated to serve on House committees that matter to this district the most.
Jazmin Robinson: I would push to bring my bipartisan policy, the Heal Act, to the House floor, which provides universal free, high-quality health care and universal free, high-quality education, including child care, before- and after-school programs, and trade schools. I would also hire a grant director and a grant coordinator to help nonprofits build nonprofit medical clinics in their district, and also district grocery stores.
Reed Showalter: We need people on day one who are ready to hold this administration accountable to impeach Donald Trump, to impeach and investigate cabinet secretaries who are behaving unconstitutionally and illegally. I’m committed to opening three constituent services offices across this district. Finally, affordability, housing, healthcare, and food.
Felix Tello: The first one is the Democracy Forward Act, which deals with the orange agent in the White House. The second concerns the Economic Action and Jobs Act. It’s critical that we get our economy moving in the right direction again.
David Ehrlich: My main interest is anti-corruption, because it leads to everything that we do. It takes our incomes away. It takes our jobs away, something that we don’t see as clearly immediately, but it’s there underneath the surface. We see corruption in Chicago all the time. We’ve got $300 million in settlements for last year’s Police Department, which takes 3000 police officers off the streets. It makes you and me less safe every day. Every time we go on the street it’s less safe, because of this corruption, we have corruption in healthcare and housing, all kinds of problems that I will solve.
What specific federal policies will you advance to expand affordable rental housing, prevent displacement, and address homelessness of Black families in the seventh congressional district and our state as a whole?
DE: The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit has provided 90% of all affordable housing over the last 30 years. The bill has been immensely successful. So I would expand that program, expand the low-income housing. It’s worked. It’s a proven program. It’s the largest proposed affordable housing program. It’s proven itself, and so that would be my first priority in housing.
FT: Real estate developers build these beautiful development projects, and they don’t make available the housing that’s necessary for those communities’ needs. So that’s what I would focus on.
RS: We should expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. We are facing the natural consequences of a housing market that’s exclusively driven by developers making a profit on homes and charging exorbitant rates. Why don’t we use the power of the federal government to cut through the red tape on this and invest deeply in building millions of new homes across the district, especially in parts of the district that have historically been disinvested in?
JR: I will use administrative law to seize the resources that are already legally ours. There’s a law, it’s called the Federal Land Grant. Under this federal agency, nonprofits are entitled to a right of first refusal, meaning we can acquire vacant federal properties at no cost to house the homeless. I will also audit the Government Accountability Office’s inventory and enforce the transfer of vacant federal buildings in Chicago directly to Black-led nonprofits.
AM: So one of the things I would do is make sure that those restrictions on federal funding and how they’re used at the local level to repair housing are a priority. We need to help potential first-time homebuyers purchase their first home. There is a Section 8 voucher program that’s part of HUD [U.S. Dept. Housing and Urban Development. I would work to expand that, because that allows us to make sure that more first-time homeowners, especially from low-income backgrounds, have that opportunity. I would work to introduce federal legislation that protects current homeowners and helps them stay in their homes.
LF: We can use Medicaid to help ensure people stay housed. Second, we need to raise wages in this country so people can afford to pay their rent. We have to budget for results. That means we have to reduce spending on defense and incarceration, and ensure we bring more money back to Illinois so my friends in Springfield can address housing needs.
TF: There are two ways that you have to do to solve this problem. First is to improve the quality of the current housing stock, as too many people have unhealthy air conditions at home, asthma, and shortness of breath. We also need more housing stock. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit should be reduced from 50% to 30% to help more people who are struggling afford those homes.
AD: Illinois is one of 18 states that are known as donor states. We send $1.38 to Washington, D.C., and we get $1 back. That is money that should be going through HUD [U.S. Dept. Housing and Urban Development] to the CHA [Chicago Housing Authority], to ensure that we have quality affordable housing.
KC: We need to run people against these county positions [commissioners], and we need to get them out of office because they are not representing our best interests. There’s a property tax hike of over 136% in Garfield Park. I want to target the military budget, which is up to $800 billion for the Pentagon. We can slash 10% of that and pour that into housing programs and vouchers and put it back into our communities.
RB: Illinois is the only state in the union that has not adhered to the Supreme Court case requiring a homeowner to receive equity in the home if they lose it to a tax buy. We gotta pass the bill in Springfield to get that done so people aren’t losing their home equity. There are also low-income housing tax credits and cooperative housing agreements, which are new, but they help keep prices down. It helps to keep people in their homes.
What is your position on Medicare for All or other single-payer health care proposals?
JR: Health care should be free. High-quality health care should be free, period. I can help right now by securing grants to invest in nonprofit health clinics that cover 100% of your healthcare costs. We have this benefit right now. The problem is, no one’s educating our community about it. We can also wipe out medical debt with grants. I can use my office to work with the nonprofits to buy medical debt.
AM: I absolutely support Medicare for all. The United States is the only major country without universal health care. It’s already legislation that is being moved through Congress. I would be one more strong, forceful vote to help them bring that legislation across the finish line.
LF: (Reporter’s note: Ford didn’t answer this question. Instead, he took the time to address Collins, who said he accepted an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police.)
TF: Medicare for all, but Medicare isn’t actually good. Medicare doesn’t cover glasses. It doesn’t cover hearing aids. Even if we got Medicare for all, we need additional resources and assistance to ensure that when we’re sick and vulnerable, it’s our humanity that prevails, that we’re protected. So Medicare for all is a start, but our health care needs to be under our democracy, and it needs to be clear that we are all protected when we need it.
AD: So I’m a supporter of Medicare for all. We need to be more specific in laws to make sure we’re running research to ensure that people are culturally competent. To ensure that medical school students are trained and know how to deal with people.
KC: Before running for office, I was a national organizer for a national health program where I trained 20,000 doctors and medical students across the country. When I’m elected, I’m going to Congress with this entire coalition of medical students and doctors who are trained in the work that I’ve done around Medicare.
RB: I support Medicare for all, but we need to address the social determinants of health. We gotta deal with all of them because we have communities in the seventh district suffering from Great Depression-level unemployment. That’s a health care issue.
DE: My priority is to provide health insurance to community members in the seventh district who lack it.
FT: What we need is the discipline that other countries have to allocate money to their health care.
RS: Of course, I support Medicare for all. We need to do the work beyond just the insurance industry. We need to invest more broadly. We want to talk about a new deal. Let’s talk about a healthcare New Deal, one that provides universal first-hour coverage for the entirety of the medical system, but also one that builds new hospitals and clinics here in this district, so you don’t have to drive 45 minutes to get care.
On protecting the Pretrial Fairness Act:
AD: Illinois is a leader in the country on this. We have to take this show on the road. It’s not enough for this to pertain only in Illinois. No person should be in prison or jail because they can’t afford bail.
TF: The federal government can continue to protect this if Congress does things like have accountability with the DOJ [U.S. Department of Justice]. There are also funding opportunities to ensure we protect these laws at the state level.
LF: No cash bail is what you call a political hot potato, and you have to be strong, really effective, to stand firm for what you believe in. No one should be sitting in jail because they can’t afford $100 to be bailed out. Republicans and some Democrats believe we should retain cash bail. I will not back down. We must take this to Washington and make sure that we look at ways to end cash bail in this entire country and make sure that it never finds its way back in Illinois, because it only costs taxpayers money.
AM: We have to be prepared for this administration to come after this. They don’t like it, they’re going to come after it. I would use my federal position to impose cuts on states that try to punish others for having no cash bail. I would also use my position to uplift the stories of the people in the district who have benefited from the Pretrial Fairness Act.
JR: So, one thing I would do is limit riders. So if you introduce a limitation rider, it basically says none of this funding bill can be used to support any of those cash bails like, you can’t support it. You can stop them from awarding grants to prisons. We can ban this nationally and demand that the Department of Justice open a civil rights investigation into states that still use cash bail.
RS: The most important thing we can do is make this the national standard. We did not abolish slavery in the United States. We just moved it to our prisons. So if we are going to the right side of this system, it means taking on root and branch every part of the extraction. It’s not just a bail system. It is the extraction of basic goods. It is the extraction of fines. It is the extraction from the communities around the people who are incarcerated.
FT: So we need to pass a law here in this state that says a public defender has to have so much experience before they can think about defending somebody, and second thing, we’ve got to control the judges.
DE: I’m in favor of a fair policy. I am very interested in learning which types of cash bail are working and which are not.
KC: We need to codify it at the federal level to ensure we’re examining it across the state.
RB: There are more than 6,000 people at the Cook County Jail. The general population has increased, not decreased. So that means something isn’t working. Let’s do the real work and ensure we keep people out of jail in the first place.
