Interview with Richard Boykin
This interview is part of a series of interviews I have done with the candidates running for the Seventh Congressional District in Illinois. A full transcript is provided below.
In this video, Richard shares his background as an attorney, a Cook County Commissioner and Danny Davis’ former chief of staff in D.C., as well as working for Senator Carol Moseley Brown and Congressman Bobby Rush.
His priorities are to lower costs, to create more jobs, to make neighborhoods safe and to tackle the 20 year life expectancy gap between communities like North Lawndale and the Loop.
He defines himself as an independent Democrat, willing to go against the grain when his conscience demands it.
Full transcript is provided below. Notes are my own. For other candidate videos, check this Substack’s Archive.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
My name is Simone Boutet, and I am doing this interview with Richard Boykin as part of a series of interviews I’m doing for the public, um, for the candidates running for the Seventh Congressional District.
Richard, thank you so much for being with me today. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and telling the voters why you were inspired to run for office.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Thank you, Simone, for having me. Thank you for doing this series of interviews. An informed citizenry is the most powerful citizenry, and an actively engaged citizenry is great for Democracy.
Look, I’m running for Congress. I’m Attorney Richard Boykin, and I’m running for Congress because I want to disrupt the status quo.
I don’t like the way that things have been going in our country. There are a lot of people who are in this race, and they’re running for whatever reason they want to, but, but I’m the most uniquely qualified.
I’m actually somebody who served in Congress. I worked for Congressman Danny Davis for 10 years as his chief of staff from 1997 to 2006. I worked for Senator Carol Mosley Braun. I worked for Congressman Bobby Rush, all of this in Washington D.C. So I understand how to get things done.
I’m a kid who grew up in Englewood, one of the most difficult zip codes known to mankind, one of the toughest areas known to mankind. And I’ve always been counted out.
But let me tell you, I became an attorney, graduating from the University of Dayton School of Law in 1994, being licensed ever since. I also became a Cook County Commissioner against all odds, running in a race with five people. I wasn’t the endorsed Democratic candidate. But I’m used to going against the grain and I’m used to going against the odds.
As a Cook County Commissioner, I’m the guy who led the effort to get rid of the sugar tax. It was more than just soda pop. It was Gatorade, orange juice, apple juice, anything that had sugar or sugar substitute in it. They wanted to tax it a penny per ounce. I got rid of it. I stood up against the party to do that. And I’ll do the same as a congressman.
I’m what you call an independent Democrat. I think for myself, I listen to the people. I always put the people’s needs ahead of the party. Because the people know what they want, and they know what they need.
I look forward to being the next congressman.
As the next congressman. I’ve prioritized three things, and this is in my people’s playbook, that’s online at RichardBoykinforcongress.com. I want to lower costs - housing, healthcare, childcare, groceries, rent - I want to lower those costs for people.
I also want to make sure that we create more jobs. Look, when you look to the east of us in Austin, Lawndale, Garfield, and you look to the west of us in Maywood, communities like Broadview and other communities, you see what we call places that are void of jobs. The west side used to be teaming with jobs. It used to be a flourishing corridor for jobs. I mean, you could quit one job today and get another job tomorrow. We had beautiful companies like Sears and Roebuck Company headquartered in Lawndale, 10,000 jobs going to the suburbs. We had International Harvester, Western Electric, 43,000 jobs. Gone. We have Brock’s Candy Company just up the road here in Austin, and thousands of jobs gone to Mexico. We had Helene Curtis, Zenith and some of the other major companies headquartered on the west side. All of those jobs have left. Thousands of jobs – gone, nothing to replace them.
And so people wonder why we have the violence that we have on the west side. They wonder why we have what is known as job deserts and food deserts on the west side. And people in Austin, many of them come to Oak Park to shop at Jewel or Pete’s. They don’t have access to really the greatest fresh vegetables and fruits in their community.
In West Garfield Park - here’s why I’m running, really. Because we have a 20 year life expectancy gap between people who live in West Garfield Park and those who live downtown. It’s just seven stops on the green line. It is shameful. It is the largest life expectancy gap in the United States of America. And it’s here in the Seventh District, the district that has more hospitals, more federally qualified community health centers, more health resources than any other district in the United States. But yet, we haven’t put them to use for the people in certain communities. And so, we need a strong West side. We need a strong western suburbs. We need a strong downtown. We need a strong south side.
I’m the only candidate running in this race, I believe, who can speak to the entire district. The district bordered at Hillside to the western suburbs, taking in communities like Oak Park, Forest Park, Bellwood, Broadview, Maywood, Westchester, River Forest, and communities to the east of us, like Austin, Lawndale, Garfield, Humboldt Park and other communities.
And then we go further east and we take in River North, south Loop, west Loop, Streeterville, and then we go south and we take in Bronzeville and west Englewood. I’m the guy who can speak to the entire district, bring the entire district together, go to work in Washington, lower costs, create more jobs and make sure that every neighborhood is safe.
Those are my priorities.
I’ll look at legislation through that lens and make sure that we introduce legislation in those three categories. And that we co-sponsor legislation in those categories. And that we stay laser focused on behalf of the Seventh District. We need a rising tide to rise all to make sure that all boats are rising, those on the west side, those in the western suburbs, and everywhere else.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
You said a lot of things that I would love to follow up on, but what comes to mind first is the concept that all of these different areas are in your district. Do you feel… you are certainly familiar with the problems on the west side and Englewood. Do you feel that the interests of the citizens are in conflict, or do you feel like they’re the same, or how would you approach representing such a diverse constituency?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
I’d do it like I did it as a county commissioner. I held more town hall meetings throughout the district than anybody else. I wanted to make sure that people understood what resources were available to them from Cook County, and quite frankly, and not to pat myself on the back, but I guarantee you if you look at the county commissioner role, nobody really knew what it did. In fact, the person who occupied the seat before me, I did an audit. We had got $0.
In terms of transportation dollars in Cook County in the First District, by the time I left, we got millions of dollars for transportation projects in the First District. We paid taxes, we pay transportation taxes, and we should get some money back. We may not have any county roads or county highways, who cares. But we pay those taxes and we should get our fair share. And so, I was all about bringing those resources, whether it be mental health resources, whether it be transportation resources, or job resources so that we could hire people at Brookfield Zoo. And we got a number of jobs people hired there. But we got a number of people hired at the county hospital, or at the Sheriff’s department. And I mean, when you think about the Sheriff’s department, the Cook County Sheriff’s Police didn’t used to really patrol in the city. They used to execute warrants, evict people from their homes and that sort of thing.
But I asked Sheriff Tom Dart, I said, “man, do you patrol in the city?”
He said, “I can, but I need to be invited in.”
I set up a meeting between Sheriff Dart and the then superintendent of Chicago Police Department, and they got together, and now you have the sheriff’s police patrolling the Gold Coast, downtown, the Magnificent Mile, and you have them in Austin and other places throughout the west side. You see them patrolling. Well, I put money in the budget at the county to make that happen.
So yeah, I’m going to use a network of town hall meetings.
I’m going to use also participatory Democracy because I believe Democracy is a bottom-up process, not a top-down process.
So I’m going to have task forces of every nature. I’m going to have a senior task force. I’m going to have a veterans’ task force. I’m going to have a doctor, a healthcare task force. I’m going to have every task force known to mankind. We’re going to meet with those task forces. We’re going to understand what their issues. And we’re going to make sure that we have democracy coming from the people in a way that you’ve never seen it before.
We’re going to connect with the folks downtown who feel like their voices have not been heard. We’re going to connect with the people in the south end and west Englewood, and in Bronzeville, whose voices have not been heard.
We’re going to make sure that everybody in the district matters. Every single person. It pains me to see people who are veterans sleeping under the viaduct. In this great country. Not far from here.
It pains me to see the homelessness crisis that we have in the western suburbs and downtown Chicago, and in Chicago on the west side. And so we’ve got to deal with these issues.
I believe I was born to do this job. I was made to do the job. I believe the job was made for me. I was made to grapple with these issues, and I’m going to do it.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
One of the issues that you mentioned doesn’t have to do with this race, is that you mentioned the sugar tax. And I want you to just speak a little bit about that. Because it… because I want you to explain to voters how you thought about that so we can get an idea of what motivated you to oppose it.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Well, here’s how I thought about it, Simone. First of all, I did town hall meetings all throughout the district. And people didn’t want the tax. They did not want it, and they thought it was a bad idea. It was a penny per ounce. And so, on a 12 ounce a can of soda or fruit juice, you have to pay additional 12 cents, and you have to pay a sales tax on that too, which I mind you, is the highest in the nation - Cook County sales tax. I voted against it, by the way, to make us the highest. I voted against that too. Uh, I thought it was a bad idea.
So I’m all for health. All of that, I’m all for it. But this tax was to create, generate $200 million in additional revenue for the county. One, I didn’t think we needed it. I think the unions wanted it. At least that’s the way the President sold it, that that Boykin stopped the tax and so I can’t give you guys the money that you all want. And so, we’ve got to, we’ve got to get rid of Boykin. That, that’s the bottom line.
And so I thought about, look, I talked to people. Here, here’s what happened, Simone, the day of the vote. The day of the vote, commissioner, former Commissioner Steele, who passed away, was in the hospital, Robert Steele. President calls my phone. She says to me, she says, Boykin, Commissioner, I need you to vote for this tax. And she said, if you vote for it, I’ll give you $52,000 from my political account to yours. I will endorse you for reelection and I’ll make sure that I get the unions behind you. Now, that’s a pretty good proposition, right? I mean, that’s a good proposition.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
I suppose if voting was transactional.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Well, here’s what I said, Madam President, I can’t do it. It’s a bad tax. The people don’t want it. It’s a bad tax.
And she said, okay, fine. Don’t ask for anything else. And she hung up the phone.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
I want to interrupt you for a second. This story answers a lot of the questions that I had for you really. Because one thing I’m concerned with, and I think people want to know is, you know, you have, like with the with the sugar tax as an example, you have two values that compete, right? You want to pay wages, but you also don’t want your constituents to have to pay more prices. You understood the health consequences of sugar, but also the cost to the voters. And I think that type of thinking, or trying to discern that type of thinking is one of the reasons why I decided to conduct these interviews, so people really get an idea of your process.
I do want to follow up on another thing because, I just… you mentioned bringing jobs to the west side. So what, what kind of legislation would you suggest would be effective in bringing jobs to the West side?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Look, I think, one, you have to do an assessment, right? There are parts of the west side that haven’t been redeveloped since the 1968 riots from the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And you have to do an assessment. Look how many jobs you have, how many you need to bring. I’m hoping to get on the Ways and Means Committee to use that tax writing committee to help induce companies to come to the west side.
But I’m also hoping to make sure that we have safe neighborhoods, right. Right now, we have a situation where last year, five out of the 10 communities with the highest number of homicides and people shot happened to be within the Seventh Congressional District. Those are Austin, Lawndale, Garfield, Humboldt Park, and Englewood. Five out of the top 10. I’m going to change that. We’ve got to change it.
You ask people who live in Austin, you ask people who live in Garfield, whether or not they’re afraid to send their kids to the park. They’re afraid. You ask people downtown, whether or not they’re afraid to come out after dark and walk around downtown. They’re afraid.
And so, we have to make sure that these communities are stable, and in order to stabilize them, you got to have people who are working in the community. They’re, they have skin in the game, right? They’re a part of the community.
And not only, when you bring jobs, it, it spreads out the tax burden on everybody else. It spreads it across the board. These real estate taxes that just came out? Permit me, if you will. Here the three communities that got hit the hardest with the real estate taxes were three communities in the Seventh Congressional district that happened to be predominantly black communities, Lawndale, Garfield, and Englewood. Three communities got hit with 100% increases in their property taxes. They were red lined during the sixties, and now they’re being squeezed for property taxes. It is wrong.
And so how am I going to bring companies back? I’m going to work with every level of government. And we’re going to put tax incentives together and we’re going to encourage companies to come and, and build, and produce on the west side of Chicago.
We did it back then. And I know you, you know, you might say, well, we’re a far more technological wise society now, AI and all of that. Well, they’re doing that stuff somewhere. And, and we have lots of land, lots of vacant lots that we can put buildings and companies on, and we can give them tax incentives to go to work and, and hire from the community. And we can train people from the community, and we can work with the unions to make sure that those who are individuals who’ve come out of correctional institutions, that they too get a second chance, that they get the proper training that they need in order to be put in the jobs.
The more W-2s we have, the better we’re going to be as a city, as a state, as a congressional district. I want to get everybody working. They will have a stake in this thing. They’ll be excited. I want to prioritize these vulnerable communities that have what I call, Great Depression levels of unemployment.
I mean, you look at Garfield, you look at Lawndale, you look at Austin. Many of these communities have double digit unemployment. And then when you look further and you say, well, let’s look at the unemployment from those who’ve stopped looking for jobs. It’s upwards of 40% in some of these communities.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
And that is unconscionable. When you look at Garfield, West Garfield, they don’t have a walkable grocery store. They use a Dollar Tree as their grocery store. When I was canvassing over there getting signatures, you know what the guys were telling me? Can, can you help me get a job? Can you help me get a job? Everybody I talked to.
And then you saw boarded up businesses. You saw vacant buildings and vacant lots, and you said to yourself, wait a minute, we’ve got to put this place to work. We, we’ve got to make sure that the largess that we have in Washington is being spread around in these communities so that they can flourish.
If you don’t fix the job problem on the west side of Chicago or in the western suburbs, then you’re going to have vulnerable communities in between. Because these people are going to do what they have to do in order to survive, which means they going to hit somebody over the head, they going to rob somebody, or the gang’s going to be their employer.
And then I’ll tell you this, Simone. I’m going to close down these open air drug markets. There’s some open air drug markets throughout the Seventh District that I’m aware of. I’m going to bring to bear all of federal resources, the FBI, the DEA, all of these resources, and we’re going to work in tandem with local, uh, folks, and we going to close down these open air drug markets. They going to have to go somewhere else and do their business. Not going to be able to do it in the Seventh district.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
You certainly have your arms wrapped around a lot of problems in our area. Can you think of one of these problems that you think is going to be the hardest one to solve?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Look, I’m used to solving problems. I’ve been solving problems all my life, and I was born to solve problems. I think they all are solvable and we just got to put the energy in. We’ve got to put the right people at the table and, and we just have to come up with the ideas to solve them. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Look, healthcare for me is a priority. It’s one of the main things, people having access to healthcare, especially given what’s happening with the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Obviously, the House has passed a bill to extend them for three years. Now we’re waiting on the Senate to act and I’m hoping they will. If they don’t act, then we’re going to have millions of people who are going to go without healthcare.
That’s going to be a problem because they can’t afford the premiums. And then when this Big Beautiful Bill takes hold in 2027, (it’s the Big Ugly Bill by the way), they cut a trillion dollars from Medicare for tax cuts for the wealthy. We’ve got to reverse that. It’s the biggest cut to healthcare programs in the history of our country.
Cutting Medicare, cutting SNAP beneficiaries and cutting Medicaid. It’s foolhardy!
I mean, people are going to, even if they don’t have healthcare, that means they’re going to go to the emergency room and get their healthcare. And guess who pays for that? Taxpayers pay for it. We pay for it one way or another.
So I’d rather people have access to healthcare on the front end as opposed to having to pay double on the back end.
So I’m going to work hard to reverse these, these cuts to these valuable programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP, so that our citizens, especially in the Seventh District, and we got a whole lot of people who depend on Medicaid in the Seventh District.
I’m very concerned about the cuts to the lead pipe program, removing lead service lines from homes and buildings. There can be no cuts to that. Congress is looking at cutting it. I’m going to make sure I fight hard for it. In Chicago, we have more homes with lead service lines than any other city in the country. The mayor wants to extend out the time to remove these lead service lines to 50 years. I’m totally opposed to that. I think we’ve got to have an FDR type thinking, uh, program, where we come up with money from the federal government, money from the state to actually aggressively attack removing these lead service lines from homes.
As you know, there is no safe level amount of lead that a child can consume. We’ve got to have drinking water that’s free of lead. And I’m going to work hard to do that.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
Pivoting just a bit to what we all think about every day, the chaos that’s in our midst of with the Trump administration, how would you propose that we go about.... I don’t even know where to start…. minimizing the chaos? Having some level of accountability? What are your thoughts about that?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Simone, we’re going to get accountability. And it’s coming fast. It’s coming, it’s coming. During the election, look, we get a Democratic house and I believe we will. Republicans are losing momentum. They’re losing steam. And the house, especially, I think they have like a one seat majority. They can only afford to lose one vote on major bills. And you know, again, Republicans came over to support extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies three years in the House.
Now we’ve got to get it through the Senate, quite frankly. I’m hoping we will. But in the House, we get a Democratic House that means we can advance the legislative agenda. That means we can introduce bills to repeal this big lousy bill. That means that we can hold the President accountable for all the negative stuff, all the criminal stuff that, that’s taken place. A lot of this crypto stuff, the alignment of him and his family members with that, well, we’ve got to hold these folks accountable, and we can initiate investigations through our committees and hold people accountable.
On the food side of things and, and the rising costs, we can utilize the Federal Trade Commission to look into monopolies and whether or not these prices are artificially inflated. And how do we get them to bring them down. So we can bring all sorts of things to bear? And I believe we’ll get a Democratic House, because I believe people are tired of what has taken place. And quite frankly, we’re going to advance an agenda for the American people, and my agenda from the People’s Playbook is lowering costs for everybody. Making sure that we create more jobs and making sure that every neighborhood is safe. Also, concomitantly with that, want to make sure that we have the best education system known to mankind.
And that means that we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do in Illinois because we have an achievement gap that’s been pretty stubborn, where black kids still are way far, way behind everybody else in terms of reading, math and science. We’ve got to make sure that we bring everybody along we can. We can’t afford to have a system where a black and brown kids are being left behind, but especially black kids. Because I looked at the numbers.
And then in the state, the thing that bothers me the most is that these guys in the state, they lowered the standards at ISBE, the Illinois State Board of Education. Instead of raising standards, they’re lowering standards. So that it can make it look like more kids are meeting the standards of reading, math and science. They’re not helping anybody. They’re not helping anybody. They’re harming the kids.
And the other thing is social promotion. We’ve got to end that social promotion. The real deal is, if a kid can’t read in high school or in elementary school, and then you give them a certificate, let’s take high school, you give them a certificate saying that you’ve met the requirements for graduating from high school. And then the kid goes and tries to fill out a job application. They can’t even read the application. Who have we failed?
What do you think that kid’s going to do? That kid’s going to say, what am I going to do? How am I going to survive? How am I going to make it?
And then for those kids who are going to college, we’ve got to make sure that there are opportunities, jobs for them when they come out of college. When they come out of school. A lot of kids are getting degrees from colleges and they can’t even get a job.
They’re going home and living in their parents’ basement.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
I know, I know all about it.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
We’ve got to deal with that.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
And the cost is a - it’s a contract that’s broken. The cost of college and the employment opportunities, it’s, it doesn’t match up.
I did a little homework and found out from the Pew Research Center that 9% of Democrats trust the government and something like 35% of Republicans. And when the Democrats are in power, those numbers just flip. But we still never get anybody having a majority of trust in government in our country. And I wonder if you could speak to that and, uh, what you could do to help those numbers increase.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
That’s because people have made promises that they have not kept. You know, if you promise something, then you need to do it. You need to follow up on it. I mean, people are saying, look, you got folks in office now who are saying the economy is great. Well, if you ask people in Austin or in Maywood or Lawndale, is the economy great? No, the economy’s not. What economy are they living in?
So they’re trying to suggest to you that it’s great, but you can actually feel when you go into the grocery store that the economy is not great. Or when you try to get a job and you can’t get a job, you can feel that it’s not great. So we need to make sure that opportunities are available for people, whether it be trade schools, whether it be education, and then we need to make sure that we have jobs for people to do. And we need to be intentional about it. And I will be intentional about it. I know there’s been some people who, there’s been a retrenchment by some companies because of the executive orders around diversity, equity, and inclusion. They don’t want to be sued and that sort of thing. But let me tell you, a diverse workforce is a great thing for America.
It’s a great thing, great, great thing for the Seventh District. I’m going to try to do everything I can to add more black doctors, more brown doctors. It’s important that a African American sees black doctors or, you know, see them in the field of practice. I want to make sure that we do that. I want to make sure that we add more black dieticians, people who teach you about nutrition in that field that’s pretty much dominated by, uh, white people.
And we need black and brown people in that field so that, you know, you can have cultural… you know...
Speaker: Simone Boutet
Yeah, culturally appropriate, yeah.
Well, you have a pretty big agenda. So when you get elected and you get there, what do you think will be the hardest, for you personally, in terms of, like a learning curve or a personal cost of being in this office?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Simone, there’s no learning curve for me, because I know where the bathrooms are, I know the people, I’ve already passed, uh, helped Davis pass legislation. I understand the budgeting process. I brought money back to the district.
Look, one of the things I want to do is, I want to put a stake, put a knife through Citizens United. I want to make sure that we get all of this money to special interest, money out of politics because I think, if we have people who focused more on providing and taking care of their constituents, than having to dial for dollars just to stay in office, I think we’d be a better country, a better served country. So I want to get special interests out of the equation.
And I want to deal with these, insurance companies too, who are charging outrageous costs for people, for, for, procedures, and you name it. I mean, I think it was Mark Cuban the other day who said, “Why is it that an MRI, an insurance company’s charging $3,500 for an MRI when you can go down the street and pay $400, three to $400 in cash and get one.”
Really, or you can get the same procedure in another country for a cheaper price. Uh, pharmaceutical drugs, the same thing. Pharmacy benefit managers, we’ve got to get rid of the middlemen, in that process, who are keeping prices artificially high, inflating prices so that they’re putting corporate profits over people.
And so I want to get rid of that. And so I’m a real threat to the establishment because I want to upend the status quo. I think we have to do it or else we’re not going to have a country. Or we’ll have two countries, one for those with means and wealthy and insured, and one for those who are uninsured and poor. We don’t want to have that. We’re the United States of America. Let’s be one America, let’s be all together. And, and, and let’s make sure that everybody has an opportunity to live what we call the American Dream. Let’s make it real for everybody.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
So you’ve talked about bringing the two parts of America together in your thinking of policy, but when you talk about Congress, the division and the polarity that’s really kind of tearing apart the country and causing legislation to be much harder to pass, what do you… how would you approach lessening that kind of threat level, I guess, the way that we treat each other or think about each other?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Look, I think we have to bring back civility. I think we have to have comity. You know, we’re at an inflection point in our country. 2035 is the date that the Social Security Trust Fund is supposed to not be able to pay full benefits out to everybody.
We won’t have enough people working to pay all of the beneficiaries. We’re projected to have about 78 million beneficiaries in Social Security, but we won’t want to have enough workforce to cover all of that. I think we’ll have about 75% that will be covered.
So we’re in the age where some big decisions are going to have to be made on how do we sustain our way of life, and also provide for the next generation of people to come. And so, we’re going to have to have what we call adults in the room. We’re not going to be able to yell at each other and do social media negative stuff against each other and all that stuff. That’s craziness. We’ve got to be adults. We’ve got to solve problems. That’s why people are elected to public office - to help improve the quality of life for other citizens. They’ve given you this trust. And now you have to make real, the commitment of improving the quality of life for people.
And that’s what I’ve always done, and that’s what I’ll always do. I’m not interested in, you know, it does not matter to me, party loyalty. My loyalty is to the people. That’s who I’m loyal to.
And that’s why I’m an independent democrat. Because bossism is not leadership, and leadership is not bossism. And basically, you elect me to lead and I’m going to lead. And that means I’m going to listen to the people and I’m going to do what’s right by the people. And so you can’t buy me. Special interests can’t buy me because you didn’t elect me. The people elected me. And it’s the people who will keep me in office.
But I’m a real threat to the status quo. And I know that, and that’s why they wanted me out of Cook County, because we were able to deal a blow to that horrible tax. Proof is in the pudding. They never brought that tax back, never even talked about it again. And the sky did not fall. People are getting medical care in the county. County care has expanded. People are getting the support of the sheriff’s department, the court system, all of that continued to go.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
At the end of your two year term, how do you think people should decide whether you’ve been doing a good job or not?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
They decide based on those three priorities, lowering costs, creating more jobs, making sure neighborhoods are safe. So, on lowering costs, you’ll be able to point to certain things that I’m going to manifestly do, and you’ll be able to see it, where we brought costs down in certain areas.
And then on creating jobs, we’ll start with a certain number of jobs that we have in the Seventh District. And how many jobs did we help directly or indirectly bring to the Seventh District based on my legislative work and the congressional work that I’ve done. And then on public safety, I’m going to go after C.O.P.S grants, Community Oriented Policing Grants.
I’m going to go after the Burn JAG grants. These are grants that help to hire more law enforcement officers. We have a big number of officers that, that are down in the City of Chicago. They need more people. People’s 9 1 1 calls are going unanswered, or they’re responding in a longer period of time, which could jeopardize somebody’s life.
And so I want to make sure that we have good relationships between law enforcement and the community. And we build those bridges. And so, I’m going to do everything I can on that side to make sure... and, and we’re going to close those open air drug markets that I talked about, and you’ll be able to judge my work in those three buckets.
And you’ll also be able to judge my voice, and whether or not my voice is being heard across the Congress. Because we’re going to get a lot of stuff done. Because I’m going to work with people - it doesn’t matter what jersey you wear, to me, what matters is a good idea. And if it’s a good idea, I can get behind it. If it’s going to help improve the quality of life for residents of the Seventh District, I can get behind it. I don’t care who introduces it or who proposes it. It makes no difference to me.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
So in a crowded field - and you definitely have a crowded field in this race - how would you like the voters to remember you. What is the one takeaway that you want people to remember you by?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
I want them to know that I’m an independent Democrat who will get the job done, who has been there, who served as chief of staff to a congressman, and who knows what to do on day one, who’s not going to be looking for staff to tell me what to do, or special interests to tell me what to do, and I’m not certainly not going to be looking for a continuation of a Danny Davis term in Congress.
I’m an independent thinker. I’m somebody who reads for myself. I read everything that comes across my desk. And they can know that they’re going to get somebody who’s actually going to represent their interests and not that of special interests.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
Richard, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
If citizens want to contact your campaign, how would they do that?
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Simone, they can reach me at www.richardboykinforcongress.com. Richard Boykin for congress.com. And please, I encourage everybody, please vote for me. You won’t be, you won’t be saddened by it. You’ll be, you’ll be very happy, and very impressed by the work that will get done. We’ll pull people together.
Speaker: Simone Boutet
Great. Thank you Richard. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker: Richard Boykin
Thank you, Simone. Thanks for everything.