Legislator Runs for Historic Position

Democratic Congressman Artur G. Davis ’90 of Alabama declared his candidacy for governor on Friday, putting himself in the running to become the state’s first black governor, and leading many in the media—and even Davis himself—to draw parallels between the aspiring governor and President Barack Obama.

Davis—the first congressman outside of Illinois to endorse the future president—led Obama’s campaign in Alabama and referenced his strong connection with the president in his candidacy announcement on Friday.

“There was a time when what I am about to try to do seemed as inconceivable as the idea of a Kenyan and a Kansan with Confederate roots joining to give birth to an American President,” he told the crowd in Birmingham.

The two men—one recently inaugurated as the first black president, the other the congressman of his state’s Seventh District—overlapped at Harvard Law School by one year. Obama graduated in 1991 and Davis in 1993.

At Harvard, Davis was studious and serious, with an addiction to politics, according to freshman roommate Joshua M. Levisohn ’90.

“He was a government geek of the highest order,” Levisohn said. “He loved everything about government and covered politics incessantly.”

During the 1986 midterm election Davis knew about every congressional race and every candidate, Levisohn said. “Some people are obsessed by baseball, or statistics,” he said. “Artur was obsessed by politics.”

At the Law School, Davis won the Best Oralist Award in the prestigious Ames Moot Court Competition, and after graduation, he went on to work at Alabama’s Southern Poverty Law Center and as a federal prosecutor.

Davis took his congressional seat after narrowly defeating Earl F. Hillard, a black democrat, in the 2002 primary. He has been in congress for the past seven years.

—Staff Writer Laura G. Mirviss can be reached at lmirviss@fas.harvard.edu.