Which Democrat Would Make A Better President For Black Chicagoans Two Delegates Debate

   Tara Stamps and Jaylin McClinton are both politically active black Chicago Democrats from communities that are predominantly low-income and racially     segregated. But they’re in different camps as the Illinois presidential primary approaches.

The 18 congressional districts in Illinois are apportioned from four to nine delegates apiece by the Democratic Party. The greater the population in a district and the larger its Democratic vote in recent elections, the more delegates it’s allotted. The district-level delegates are chosen in proportion to the vote for their presidential candidate within their districts in the March 15 primary. In the Seventh congressional district, for instance, nine delegates are at stake, and Clinton and Sanders each have nine delegates pledged to them on the ballot. If Clinton gets two-thirds of the vote and Sanders one-third, the six Clinton delegates who get the most votes, and the top three finishers among the delegates pledged to Sanders, become delegates for the national convention.

“Senator Sanders is a New Deal kind of Democrat,” Stamps says. “He believes government has a responsibility to its citizenry. He realizes that if people are supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they have to have the boots.”

Sanders has “hands-down way more support” than Clinton on the U. of I. campus, McClinton allows. But many of his friends are undecided, and he’s been lobbying them. “When you hear ‘free college,’ you’re instantly excited, but you have to look at the details,” he says. He tells his black friends in particular that he worries about the impact on historically black, private colleges of making public colleges free. He also advises his friends to focus not just on Sanders’s lofty ideas, but on what is “feasible.” He thinks Clinton’s experience and pragmatism make her more likely to develop “tangible solutions” that will “help places like Roseland build up their local economy.”

McClinton and Stamps are in accord about the other party’s presidential campaign. “People like Donald Trump, who’s attempting to instill fear, are really concerning to me,” McClinton says. “It’s been mind-blowing to me that he’s been able to win so many states.”