Saying he filed more than 12,000 signatures to run for re-election, Representative Danny K. Davis (D-7th) on December 31 chided Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin for challenging his petitions.
“They finally withdrew their objections of my nominating petitions because they were playing the old hard-core political gamesmanship of trying to derail” his campaign Davis said.
“I filed over 12,000 signatures when it takes over 820 signatures to get on the ballot,” Davis told the Chicago Crusader. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that out of 12,000 you are most likely to find 820 good signatures.
“They filed objections that my signature was not my signature on my statement of candidacy and on signatures that I had gathered and that the persons who notarized it didn’t do so in my presence,” explained Davis, who is running for a fifteenth term.
“When it was time for the second (Chicago Board of Election Commissioners) hearing they, Conyears-Ervin and her husband Alderman Jason Ervin, withdrew their objections because it was part of the game,” Davis said.
Referring to a song entitled, “Many A Tear Has to Fall,” Davis added “that it’s all in the game of hard core, hardnose politics which they are accustomed to. It’s the way they operate.”
In reality Davis said, “They knew I had enough signatures. The point was to make me spend money and to try and discredit our people who went out and got the 12,000 plus signatures and to try to make it appear that there was something wrong with the way we were operating.
“But they didn’t just file objections to my petitions,” Davis said. “They filed objections for all of the candidates who filed petitions to run for Congress in the Seventh District. This was the 28th Ward Regular Democratic Organization headed by Committeeman Jason Ervin, the husband of Melissa Conyears-Ervin” that challenged his petitions, Davis explained.
When asked his reaction to the false filing of objections to his signatures, Davis said he will continue to go out every day and talk to as many people as he can and to attend as many events as he can and “remind people that as we have Watch Services, as I reminded people during the Christmas celebrations that government was intricately involved and the reason we have Christmas,” said Davis.
He said just as the slaves spent New Year’s Eve watching to see if they would finally be freed, so it is today that “we are watching to usher in a New Year, a new election, a new opportunity and a responsibility in 2024.”
Messages left for the Ervins were not returned.
