By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

Illinois Rep. Danny K. Davis will set off a Democratic Party scramble if he follows through with running for local office instead of his seat in Congress next year,

Davis, who is serving his seventh term in the House, said Monday on WFLD-TV, Chicago’s Fox affiliate, that his exploratory campaign for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners has been “organizing, we’re beginning to raise money, we’re beginning to do all of the things that you would do to plan for an election.”

Davis also said that he’s enjoyed his service in Congress and working with President Obama, a fellow Chicagoan, but “all politics really is local” and the county board is “the last resort — it’s the safety net for most vulnerable parts of our population.”

Illinois’ earliest-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 2, 2010, demands that prospective successors begin readying bids to succeed Davis in Congress.

Candidates can begin circulating nominating petitions on Aug. 4, nearly three months before the Nov. 2 filing deadline, also the nation’s earliest.

The Democratic primary is the operative election in a district, anchored in Chicago’s West Side, that is more than three-fifths black and which gave Barack Obama 88 percent of its votes in the 2008 election — one of his highest totals in the nation. About three-fourths of the district vote comes from Chicago, with the rest from close-in Cook County suburbs like Oak Park.

One likely candidate is Richard Boykin, a former legislative director and chief of staff to Davis who is now a lobbyist at the Chicago firm Barnes and Thornburg.

Illinois’ 7th District includes numerous state legislators and aldermen — Chicago’s equivalent of city council members — who also can be expected to weigh a campaign for a rare open seat.

Potential candidates include state Reps. LaShawn Ford and Karen Yarbrough and state Sen. Rickey Hendon.

A campaign for Congress also might be an attractive option to some of the candidates who vied with Davis for the seat in 1996, when he prevailed over nine other candidates with 33 percent of the vote. Davis’ next-closest challengers in that race were Aldermen Dorothy Tillman (20 percent), who was defeated for re-election in 2007, and Ed H. Smith (12 percent), who has served in his position for more than 25 years. Smith lost a 2008 Democratic primary for Cook County recorder of deeds.

Davis on July 5 released a poll that shows him running strongly against incumbent Todd Stroger and other Democratic candidates for the county board presidency.

“This information leads me to believe that a majority of the voters in Cook County view me favorably, and therefore today I am announcing the formation of a committee to explore and plan a run for president of Cook County Board of Commissioners,” Davis said in a statement. “Cook County citizens are concerned about high taxes, poor services, high crime, drugs and substance abuse, juvenile delinquency and the overall direction of our government.”