In the past three elections women have set records for representation in Congress, and when the 118th Congress was sworn in last January they held 28 percent of seats, the highest percentage ever. Of course, Vice President Kamala Harris holds the highest federal office a woman has ever held, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley became the first Republican woman to win a GOP nominating contest this year when she won the races in Washington, D.C., and Vermont. Whether and how women continue to make progress in this election cycle is still being decided this primary season.
Across the primaries in Illinois and Ohio, 17 Democratic women are running for seats in Congress, including nine incumbents.
That list includes some big races. Among them is the race for Illinois’s 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Chicago, where 28-year incumbent Democratic Rep. Danny Davis’s two biggest challengers are women. As Kaleigh mentioned earlier, his biggest threat is Kina Collins, a progressive activist who challenged Davis in 2020 and 2022, running to his left on issues like gun violence prevention and health care reform. She came within 7 percentage points of Davis in 2022, earning 46 percent of the vote to his 52, and has a higher profile this year and more funding from national groups. Another major candidate is Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who’s now serving as Chicago’s treasurer and has been endorsed by the Chicago teacher’s union. Conyears-Evans also faces an ethics probe after firing whistleblowers who accused her of ethics violations and misuse of public resources. Both women are attacking Davis’s age — he is 82 — while Davis says his constituents benefit from his seniority.
Meanwhile, in Ohio’s 9th District, 41-year incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in Congress, is running unopposed in her Democratic primary, but will face a general election challenge from whomever wins today’s wide-open Republican primary. As Nathaniel noted in his race preview, redistricting after the 2020 census made Kaptur’s district more Republican, but the [withdrawal this year](] of far-right candidate J.R. Majewski, whom she beat in 2022, could give the winning Republican in today’s contest a better chance at unseating Kaptur.
—Monica Potts, 538
Source Agencies
