Ahead of March 17, Growing Community Media is profiling the 15 candidates running in the 7th congressional Democratic and Republican primary. Whoever wins the November election will succeed Rep. Danny Davis, who is retiring after nearly 30 years in the position.
To help constituents decide who to cast their vote for, Chicago’s Westside branch of the NAACP hosted a forum Jan. 27 at The Collins Academy STEAM High School in North Lawndale. Remel Terry — president of the NAACP’s Chicago Westside branch and of Chicago’s Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability — moderated the discussion.
A dozen candidates attended, including Democrats Richard Boykin, Anthony Driver Jr., Dr. Thomas Fisher, La Shawn Ford, Rory Hoskins, Anabel Mendoza, Jazmin Robinson, Reed Showalter, and Felix Tello. Republican candidates Chad Koppie and Patricia Easley were also present. Democrat Melissa Conyears-Ervin joined the forum during the second question, which she answered with her opening statement. Other candidates running include Democrats David Elrich and Jason Friedman, who was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict.
Democrat Kina Collins was unable to attend the forum due to a previous engagement with voters, but submitted a comment: “My campaign is rooted in advancing equity and opportunity on the West Side, fighting for quality public schools, accessible and affordable healthcare, economic investment that creates good paying union jobs, and real public safety solutions that center dignity and justice.”
After opening statements, the forum’s participating candidates answered three questions. Candidates were seated randomly and responded in the same order for both questions.
Remel Terry: What specific federal policies would you champion to improve economic opportunities for Black Chicagoans in the 7th district? Please be specific about programs and explain how you would track progress in closing disparities.
Jazmin Robinson (D)
Senior human resource professional who designs, builds and manages employee benefits and systems
Robinson is running on her HEAL Act that tackles the root causes of inequality by increasing funding for health care and education, amending access to government by banning PACs and lobbyists, and raising the living wage.
Robinson said every congressperson gets $10-20 million in community and project funding annually and suggested using this to replace lead pipes and invest in local libraries and schools in the neighborhoods of the 7th district that need it most. Robinson also named federal surplus personal property donations as a way to get laptops, furniture and vehicles that the federal government is no longer using into the 7th district. She said, in the bills that could accomplish these things, legislators can write earmarks that dictate that resources must go to those who need them most.
If elected to Congress, Robinson said she’d hire a grant director and coordinator to help small businesses and nonprofits apply for grants. She would also aim to unbundle multi-million-dollar government contracts that often go to one company, aiming to redistribute funds to smaller businesses.
Patricia Easley (R)
Host of the Black Excellence Hour, Fox News contributor
“I’m going to bring capitalism back to the district,” Easley said, stating the need for manufacturing to return to the West Side. She said that, when Sears was located in North Lawndale, it was one of the richest Black neighborhoods in the country. “When that manufacturing comes back, we’ll have opportunities to open up small businesses to support those manufacturing corporations, and that’s how we build wealth.”
Easley added that the West Side has become a social service economy: “We don’t want any more grants. We don’t need any grants,” Easley said. “I want to put my people back to work.…We are better than social working. We know how to work for ourselves. We know how to count our own money. We know how to balance our own checkbooks. We are not a charity. What we are is mismanaged.”
Reed Showalter (D)
Former attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, former senior policy advisor of National Economic Council, former worker on Congress’ Judiciary Committee
Showalter also said there was a need to break up monopolies, which he said dismantled the manufacturing district Easley wants to bring back.
“We had a whole lot of monopoly capitalism roll through and buy up, shutter and destroy the local businesses here,” Showalter said. “There’s a reason why our hospital systems, West Suburban and Loretto, are struggling on the frontline because they keep getting purchased and sold.”
Showalter added that, instead of subsidizing government programs, we should be creating new opportunities in the 7th district. He said we could build homes in the district with union labor, rather than “hoping that if we give enough tax breaks to private developers, that they’ll ride in and they’ll save us.”
Richard Boykin (D)
Attorney, former chief of staff for Cong. Danny Davis, former Cook County commissioner
Boykin said there’s a need for a concentrated, stateside strategy like the Marshall Plan, where the United States sponsored over $13 billion in recovery programs to Western Europe after World War II. He said economic development for a plan like this would create thousands of jobs on the West Side, ones that have been lost without the presence of major manufacturing companies.
Boykin said the West Side also needs an education plan, where young people are better prepared to go to college, into a trade or employment after high school. And he advocated for comprehensive access to affordable, quality health care, adding that he would reverse cuts made by President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill and extend Obamacare subsidies.
La Shawn Ford (D)
Illinois State Representative for the 8th district
Ford also touted the need for better educational opportunities, like more funding for higher education and trade schools, in order to reduce the unemployment rate on the West Side. And he cited the need for federal funding to create jobs through large organizations in the district.
“We need to make sure that, when the government funds hospitals, those contracts and opportunities trickle down into the community, so that we can grow our businesses in the neighborhood, so that we can hire people,” Ford said. He cites Rush University Medical Center as an example, stating that the hospital could grant contracts with West Side businesses. The same with the Illinois Department of Corrections, the Cook County Jail, Chicago Public Schools and Chicago parks. “These are jobs that have to be transferred to the community. Jobs and contracts create low unemployment, and it also creates safer communities.”
“For the last 19 years, I’ve connected people to jobs every day,” Ford added. “There hasn’t been a day in our office where we haven’t connected people to a job.”
Felix Tello (D)
Executive engineer at Siemens
Tello founded and leads the Community Justice and Equity Movement, which helps communities across the county to fight for reparations — something he said the Congressional Black Caucus has been advocating for years.
“The Black community has had centuries of this crap. The Black wealth is one-tenth that of the white wealth in this country, and it’s really a shame,” Tello said. He added that his organization is learning from existing communities with reparations, like Evanston, “building on successes, addressing challenges and investing in justice, equity and opportunity for all.”
Chad Koppie (R)
Retired airline pilot, farmer, octogenarian
“I am well aware of the crisis in the Black community that’s gone on for hundreds of years,” Koppie said, citing the millions of people who came to the United States and were sold into slavery.
“There’s another issue, the abortion issue, that is very much akin to the slavery issue. They were both approved by the Supreme Court in the United States. The slavery issue was resolved with the Civil War, which was an awesome situation. We all know about the 600,000 people who were killed. Since the abortion thing became legal in the United States, there’s something like 75-to-100 million dead Americans. And the ratio of abortion in the Black community is much higher than it is in the white community.”
Rory Hoskins (D)
Mayor of Forest Park, attorney, former village commissioner
Hoskins said that funding public works would improve economic opportunities for Black Chicagoans in his district, specifically around I-294. Hoskins was a founding member of the I-290 Blue Line Coalition, which advocates for reconstruction of the Eisenhower, the CTA rails that run along it, and surrounding streets. Hoskins said more funding for projects around the expressway would create jobs and new space for businesses.
Hoskins also wants federal forgiveness of student loans and public service loans, and for federal tax credits to incentivize hiring people in vulnerable communities.
Anabel Mendoza (D)
Immigrant rights organizer, youngest candidate
Mendoza said three main things could help improve this economic opportunity. First, she wants to invest in local entrepreneurs and small businesses, rather than large corporations, which don’t know what communities need or want.
“That’s the obligation of the federal government to bring those dollars back into our communities to make those small businesses a reality for these entrepreneurs,” Mendoza said. She added that Congress needs to raise the federal minimum wage, from $7.25 an hour to closer to $30, and advocate harder for reparations.
“We need to make sure that reparations drive direct cash payments to close that racial and opportunity wealth gap, so that people are able to invest in their communities the way that others have been able to for decades,” Mendoza said.
Dr. Thomas Fisher (D)
Emergency room doctor at University of Chicago Medicine
Fisher also said he wants deeper federal investments in post-high school education, like trade school and community college. And for more investment in local entrepreneurs and small businesses, which create jobs across communities.
He also would advocate for better infrastructure, like federal funding for updates to CTA trains lines and stations. Infrastructure projects create jobs, and legislators can embed sections into bills that require investment in low-income communities, Fisher said.
Anthony Driver Jr. (D)
Former executive director of SEIU IL, former president of CCPSA, where he now serves as commissioner under Remel Terry
If elected to Congress, Driver would support legislation where “every single person who wants a job should be guaranteed a job by the federal government,” one where they make at least $20 an hour and have universal health care. Driver said one of the things he’s most proud of in life is leading SEIU’s fight to raise Illinois’ minimum wage to $15 an hour, though that’s not enough. He said there needs to be more funding and legislation specifically for Black people.
“I also watched how, when we raised the minimum wage, Black people were the first to lose their jobs. You hear people talk about Medicare for all, but you won’t hear people talk about the Black maternal health crisis where black women die at three times the rate. What are you doing if you get Medicare for all, but you don’t specifically address the Black maternal health crisis? You’re expanding access to inequality,” Driver said. “You hear people talk about community college for all, but they won’t say anything about HBCUs,” said Driver, who went to Howard University.
Driver said the federal government should also subsidize the removal of lead pipes — which added are more abundant in Cook County than anywhere else in the country — and prioritize hiring people from impacted communities to do the job.
“This one single issue — we remove the lead service lines in Chicago — can solve a lot of these economic issues. This is the issue of political will. You have people up here talking about ‘I’ve been there. I’ve been around this whole time.’ Why do things still look the same way?”
Question 2
Remel Terry: One of the leading causes of personal bankruptcy is medical debt. Federal public health and healthcare utilization data shows that Black people experience poorer health outcomes and higher exposure to medical debt than other groups. What federal policy levers fall within your authority to address this disparity?
Felix Tello
Tello is for universal health care. He said Congress needs to appropriate money for health care by restoring Trump’s cuts to the Affordable Care Act.
“We need to focus on appropriating money, not just for Black folks, but everybody who’s at a disadvantaged level. It just takes one little trip to the emergency room and they’re screwed, so we need to cover everybody,” Tello said.
Chad Koppie
Koppie said, “We’ve got to stop the fraud. In other words, the hospitals, the doctors, the insurance companies are looting the system. If we could just have truth to the matter and stop the fraud, that would be my answer.”
Rory Hoskins
Hoskins supports Medicare for all. He also cites a program where Cook County used Covid-era relief funds to buy medical debt and suggests a broader program that would allow for the purchase of medical debt incurred by vulnerable families.
Anabel Mendoza
“I absolutely support Medicare for all, but I want to go a little deeper,” Mendoza said, adding that the federal government should forgive all medical debt. “I think of someone like my mom, who was recently diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo a very invasive surgery. I can’t imagine having come out of that surgery, and now she has to worry about losing her home on top of that. That’s unacceptable.”
Mendoza said housing is intrinsically linked with medical debt. In Congress, she’d create legislation that provides emergency funding to ensure homeowners who are in crisis, including medical debt, don’t lose their homes.
Dr. Thomas Fisher
Fisher also advocates for Medicare for all or other universal coverage, and for restoring the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.
“The No. 1 predictor of whether or not people survive cancer right now is whether or not they’re driven into bankruptcy in the course of their treatment. That’s immoral. That is not right,” Fisher said. But he added that access to health care isn’t the primary indicator of health.
“The reason there’s a 20-year life expectancy gap between West Garfield Park and Streeterville has nothing to do with health care,” Fisher said. “Do Black folks have the housing that we deserve, the jobs, the food, security? Until we do that, health care is not the primary issue.”
Anthony Driver Jr.
Driver also believes in free health care, but agrees that Congress needs to take it a step further by writing legislation that respects and protects Black people.
“What is Medicare for all if you don’t have culturally competent doctors? What is Medicare for all if you struggle to find a vein when you draw blood from Black people?” Driver said. He added that he’d work to ban those working in the health insurance industry from contributing to political campaigns.
“People don’t talk about why we don’t have universal healthcare. It’s because our politicians are bought and paid for. They’re not accountable to the people, they’re accountable to these industries,” Driver said.
Jazmin Robinson:
Robinson agreed that health insurance companies should be banned from contributing to campaigns, along with all PACs and lobbyists.
“We need to ban them completely because they buy our Congress representatives. Every single one of them are sold,” Robinson said.
According to her fair tax plan, Robinson said removing people who buy Congress could finance free, high-quality health care.
Because medical debt can be sold to a debt collector for pennies on the dollar, Robinson suggests partnering with nonprofits who could buy medical debt to fight corporations. A $50,000 investment from nonprofits could wipe out $5 million of medical debt, Robinson said.
Patricia Easley
Easley wants to re-legislate Medicaid, making it so that the federal government pays 100%, instead of 60-to-70% of the total cost. She also wants to restrict banks from participating in the health care business and to improve safety net hospitals.
Safety net hospitals like West Suburban and Loretto don’t have access to credit, “which means that they do not have the money to give people charity for their medical bills like a Rush, like a Northwestern. If you don’t have the money to function, you cannot do it. And that is legislative,” Easley said. “If you are a private institute insurance holder and you go to a safety net institution, you are going to pay more because that institution does not have the cushion to absorb the health care costs.”
Reed Showalter
Showalter also supports Medicare for all, but added that Congress needs to restructure the health care system.
“We need to wipe out the possibility of medical debt, but you don’t get to do that unless you take on the structure of the medical system in the first place,” Showalter said. He said that means making it so for-profit companies can’t own hospitals and capping the price of pharmaceuticals.
Richard Boykin
When Boykin was a Cook County commissioner, the county started buying medical debt from residents. But he said Congress needs to take it a step further with universal health care coverage. Boykin said, if elected, he would cut 10% of the Department of Defense’s budget and funnel the $88 billion into health care.
“They found money for the illegal migrants who came here, and we can find money for citizens, so that they don’t have to worry about being bankrupted for medical debt,” Boykin said.
La Shawn Ford
In addition to restoring the Affordable Care Act, if elected to Congress, Ford would prioritize more federal funding for safety net hospitals and Federally Qualified Health Centers. These would provide more accessible care that prevents reentry into hospitals, which often causes medical debt.
Ford also stresses the need for culturally competent doctors and funding for HBCUs “because Black people need culturally sensitive doctors in our communities.”
Question three
Remel Terry: What do you see as a key challenge facing the 7th district and how would you solve it?
La Shawn Ford
Ford said unity is a big challenge, as the 7th district covers part of Chicago and the suburbs, the city’s financial district and medical district.
“The biggest problem that we have in this district right now is the disparities in education, health care and opportunities,” Ford said. “We must do better by making sure we spread and share the wealth in this district.”
Felix Tello
When he was canvassing, Tello said he heard that constituents’ main priorities are democracy and the economy.
“We have got to get jobs back into our community. There’s nothing else but the economic engine to bring back prosperity to the community,” Tello said.
Chad Koppie
Koppie said the 7th district has “skyrocketing crime, unaffordable housing, an unmanageable migrant crisis and crushing cost of living.”
He added that he would restore public safety by repealing the Safe-T Act — which allows someone arrested for a nonviolent offense to be cited and released, rather than waiting to post bond — and making sure law enforcement holds violent criminals accountable.
Rory Hoskins
Hoskins said a key challenge is poor infrastructure, like roads, local transit systems and affordable housing. If elected, he’d want to extend the CTA Blue Line further west, since much of the district’s wealth is concentrated around the Loop.
“There are opportunities in the west suburbs through the enterprise zone programs, through colleges like Triton College and Morton College. We have to invest in jobs and housing,” Hoskins said.
Anabel Mendoza
Mendoza said there are two key issues in the 7th district: housing and unity. She said Congress needs to expand the Department of Urban Development’s Section 8 voucher program to allow for more first-time homebuyers.
“In the United States, we know that owning property is what allows any community to grow wealth,” Mendoza said. She added, “We need to unite. We’re going to keep losing if we do not unite.”
Dr. Thomas Fisher
“Nothing matters more than the length and quality of our lives,” Fisher said. “You do not get to take advantage of Social Security if you die before you’re eligible, but you paid into it your entire life.”
To help address the death gap, Fisher said we need a government that funds food for the hungry and medicine for the sick.
“We need to breathe life back into our federal government that bases its decisions in a moral foundation that takes care of each other,” Fisher said.
Anthony Driver Jr.
Driver also stressed the life expectancy gap because it touches every single issue in the 7th district. And he mentioned affordability at a time when people are being priced out of their homes with high costs of property taxes, gas and health care, while wages aren’t keeping up.
“If we want to keep this district healthy, happy and thriving, people have to be able to afford to stay here,” Driver said. “And with the life expectancy gap, we need a North Star that says every five years we need to close this life expectancy gap by a wide margin, so 10, 20 years from now it doesn’t exist.”
Jazmin Robinson
Robinson said equity was the biggest issue facing the district, and that Congress could fix it by enacting three things. One is the Housing Urban Development Act that mandates 30% of new hires for federal programs must come from low-income districts. Another is amending the formula of federal grants to prioritize aging infrastructure and areas with dense poverty. The third is a federal grant that provides medically impoverished neighborhoods with a free nonprofit clinic.
Patricia Easley
Easley said housing is the district’s largest problem. She said she worked with Congressman Davis and Boykin to bring someone from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to tour the 7th district “and let them see what federal housing mismanagement looks like.”
Reed Showalter
Showalter said the federal government needs to take bigger swings to better invest in the 7th district. That includes funding to build new hospitals and clinics, affordable housing and grocery stores in every part of the district.
“The reason why it is difficult to go to a grocery store and find affordable food is because we are not investing at a federal level in the way that the federal government is exclusively equipped to do, in building new supply chains and allowing people to start new businesses and grocery and restaurants,” Showalter said. “These are the types of big swings that we need to ask from our federal representatives. And if we don’t do that, then we’re going to be stuck with the issues we’ve heard about.”
Melissa Conyears-Ervin
Chicago city treasurer
Conyears-Ervin said affordability is one of the district’s biggest challenges, and that the role of a congressperson is to bring back money to their district.
“As city treasurer, I made it my business to boycott Donald Trump so that our money would not go to Washington D.C. for him to turn around and hurt us,” Conyears-Ervin said.
Richard Boykin
Boykin called access and affordability of health care the district’s main issues.
“We have more hospitals, more health care resources in the 7th district than anybody else in the country, but those resources don’t go to work for folks on the West Side nor on the South Side,” Boykin said. He would aim to close health disparities and increase access to mental health services.
