The news of this seems to have been quashed by the Sanford saga but I felt it was important enough to bring up in a diary. Rep. Danny Davis has opened an exploratory committe to run for Cook County Board President. Davis ran for the position a few years back and lost to John Stroger’s son Todd, but now it looks like he could upset Stroger. Stroger’s antics have been making more voters angry over the past year, and Mike Quigley was able to win the IL-05 by touting his experience “fighting” the Stroger machine.
First off, why would Davis do this? He’s been in the House since 1996, and Cook County Board President appears to be a step down in some ways (granted, you do get to have a lot of influence over Chicago politics). He’s been a fixture in Chicago politics for 3 decades, but it seems between this and his previous desire to take Obama’s vacated Senate seat, he just wants to get out of Congress.
I’ve also failed to see any news sources talk about potential successors lining up to replace Rep. Davis. For a district as Democratic as his, why hasn’t there been the requisite feeding frenzy of ambitious aldermen, state legislators and county comissioners running to get a ticket to Washington? Is there anyone interested?
Just curious about this – for what could be a battle royale in Chicago politics, there’s been little coverage of it.
IL State legislative maps at http://www.ilga.gov so i have no idea who represents what. Also it seems the only residencies listed, for Chicago members, are ‘Chicago’. Not which part. Which certainly doesnt help things. Although saying you live in the ‘South Side of Chicago’ wouldnt help things, either, in Jackson, Jr. and Rush’s district and maybe some other. And the only member I can find (without individually clicking on each member’s own Wiki bio. Im not that patient) that I know lives in Davis’s district is State Sen. Don Harmon, of Oak Park. Oak Park is one of the few non-Chicago cities in the district. But I dont think he will run as he is a white state senator and this is an overwhelmingly black district. The chances of him winning are pretty nil. Its basically have to be a brutal 8-10 way fight!
if Kwame Raoul, who replaced Obama in the IL Senate, would run. If he lives in this district. He is Haitian-American and so it would be something if there were 2 Haitian Americans elected in Nov. 2010. Him and someone in Kendrick Meek’s district. As there has never been a Haitian American member of Congress before.
In Chicago, the local positions- Mayor, State’s Attorney, County Board President- are so powerful, and the legislative positions are so interchangeable (Davis, Rush, Jackson, and Quigley are all going to vote substantially similarly) that the local jobs really are the better ones. You can see this in the height of the Machine’s power in the 50s and 60s, when the lowest men on the totem pole would get sent to Springfield or Washington, then return to Chicago once they had experience.