{"id":88021,"date":"2020-03-12T18:49:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T23:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=88021&preview=true&preview_id=88021"},"modified":"2020-03-13T14:27:43","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T19:27:43","slug":"at-29-kina-collins-is-the-youngest-black-woman-to-run-for-office-in-illinois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/at-29-kina-collins-is-the-youngest-black-woman-to-run-for-office-in-illinois\/","title":{"rendered":"At 29, Kina Collins is the youngest black woman to run for Congress in Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brandon Raphael Dupre
\n<\/strong>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

Kina Collins wears a black shirt with white block letters spelling out the names of the four congresswomen known as The Squad. She greets the owner of L!VE Caf\u00e9 in Oak Park with a hug before taking a seat at the table in the back corner. \u201cGive credit where credit is due,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have carved out their space and done it, and they’ve changed the fabric of American politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 29, Collins is the youngest black woman to ever run for congress in Illinois. The Austin native is one of three Democratic candidates challenging 12-term Rep. Danny Davis in Illinois\u2019 7th Congressional District, which stretches from Oak Park and Westchester on the West Side to swaths on the South Side and through downtown Chicago, making it one of the state\u2019s most diverse districts.<\/p>\n

Like Squad members Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, Collins is a young woman of color running against a longtime incumbent. And, like Pressley, she is running against a progressive Democrat who votes along similar ideological lines. But in her mind, the climate is right for another woman of color to upset an established career politician.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 young political career formed in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting, when Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke killed the unarmed 17-year-old. She was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, attending Louisiana State University at the time, but left in 2015 after a court ordered the release of the McDonald police dashcam video.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a bunch of 17- to 24-year-olds who are like, \u2018Wait, why did the police officer have a gun and not a Taser?\u2019 That wiped all the naivety out of my mind, and that’s when we realized, the protesters of Laquan McDonald, that the action and the things we were doing couldn\u2019t just be on the front lines,\u201d she said. \u201cWe needed to be in the policy rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins learned about gun violence at age 7. While playing outside with her family on a hot summer day, she saw a boy fatally shot in the street. Since then, she has worked in Chicago and Washington, D.C., fighting for gun legislation.<\/p>\n

Collins combines a background in activism with experience in the political process. She coauthored her first bill in 2018, creating the Illinois Council on Women and Girls Act \u2014 a direct response to the Trump administration\u2019s elimination of the White House Council on Women and Girls.<\/p>\n

The Pritzker decision<\/h2>\n

In 2017, while working as a paid staffer on J.B. Pritzker\u2019s gubernatorial campaign, Collins received an email that would shape her young political career. A black senior staffer called her\u2014it was urgent. Did you read the email?<\/em> She hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In her inbox, Collins found an email about leaked FBI recordings of Pritzker making racially insensitive comments about two black politicians seeking to fill Obama\u2019s senate seat in 2009. On the recordings, Pritzker calls then-Secretary of State Jesse White the \u201cleast offensive\u201d black candidate and former Senate President Emil Jones \u201ctoo crass.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pritzker campaign allowed an atmosphere of \u201csexism and racism,\u201d she said. In front of senior staffers, Collins said, a regional organizing director made an \u201cextremely sexually harassing comment\u201d toward her. No one intervened.<\/p>\n

Gov. Pritzker\u2019s office did not respond to emails and phone calls for comment.<\/p>\n

Collins left the campaign and posted the news of her departure in a Facebook post she thought \u201cwould only get a couple of likes by family and friends.\u201d In the post, she talked about standing up for the principles of her community and against the \u201cproblematic fabrics of politics\u201d in Illinois.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t stand by a candidate who thinks this way about black people,\u201d she said. \u201cI know my power in the community, and they trust me because this is the community I grew up in, and we\u2019ve got to tell people the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before long, ABC trucks and camera crews crowded the street in front of her parent\u2019s house in the Austin neighborhood, all looking for Collins.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow these newspapers and like everybody was calling me, and I was like, \u2018what the f—,\u2019 ABC7 showed up to my house, [reporter] Craig Wall was at my front door,\u201d said Collins. \u201cBut I was afraid because [Pritzker] is a billionaire.\u201d<\/p>\n

After leaving the Pritzker campaign, Collins was hired immediately by Sameena Mustafa, who at the time was running against Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois\u2019 5th congressional district in 2018. Mustafa lost to Quigley, receiving only 24% of the vote. But for Collins, it stoked the fires of ambition, driving her toward a run for elected office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to Springfield after that to pass a bill and everyone knew who I was, the other gubernatorial candidates knew who I was, and it was a level of respect immediately, which I didn\u2019t get before when I was just kind of playing the role,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The primary<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s a longshot bid to upset an incumbent with money and name recognition. Davis served as an alderman and Cook County commissioner and then, in 1997, became a congressman. His campaign has $300,000 on hand compared to Collins\u2019 $20,000, according to a fourth quarter report by the Center for Responsive Politics. The two other challengers, lawyer Kristine Schanbacher and teacher Anthony Clark, have $70,000 and $20,000 on hand, respectively.<\/p>\n

Davis declined to comment on Collins or the election. \u201cWe just have to wait and see on election day what happens,\u201d said Tumia Romero,\u00a0 Davis’ communication director.<\/p>\n

Collins is 49 years younger than Davis, a disparity she isn’t afraid to emphasize. \u201cI just think that congressman Davis is running out of gas and energy, he’s the same age as my grandfather and my grandfather has been retired for about 10 years,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n

If Collins were to pull off the upset, it would seem like out of nowhere, the lesser known challenger upsetting the established politician. But this story has been written before, in 2018 when challengers like AOC and Pressley won shock victories. And like those campaigns, it would rely on small donations and grassroots efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have shattered the binary of what it means to run a real grassroots campaign,\u201d Collins said. \u201cAt this point, we\u2019re door knocking, phone banking, canvassing \u2014 got the texting game \u2014 just annoying everybody to show them we\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Collins addresses a group of voters at an open house in Oak Park. (Brandon Raphael Dupre\/MEDILL)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brandon Raphael Dupre Medill Reports Kina Collins wears a black shirt with white block letters spelling out the names of the four congresswomen known as The Squad. She greets the owner of L!VE Caf\u00e9 in Oak Park with a hug before taking a seat at the table in the back corner. \u201cGive credit where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":689,"featured_media":88029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2952,2951,4892],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-88021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-politicsnational-security","category-winter-2020","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nAt 29, Kina Collins is the youngest black woman to run for Congress in Illinois - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/at-29-kina-collins-is-the-youngest-black-woman-to-run-for-office-in-illinois\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At 29, Kina Collins is the youngest black woman to run for Congress in Illinois - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Brandon Raphael Dupre Medill Reports Kina Collins wears a black shirt with white block letters spelling out the names of the four congresswomen known as The Squad. 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