Chicago, Illinois: Juliana Stratton Wins U.S. Senate Seat Succeeding Dick Durbin, AP Projects

CHICAGO, Illinois: Juliana Stratton will be the next United States senator from Illinois. The Associated Press projected on Tuesday night that Stratton, the state lieutenant governor, defeated Republican Don Tracy for the open seat held for three decades by Sen. Dick Durbin. NBC News also projected Stratton as the winner.

Polls closed across Illinois at 7 p.m. Central Time, and the race was called on election night. A third candidate, Whitfield Harrington, also appeared on the ballot. The result holds the seat for Democrats. Illinois has not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 2010.

From Chicago to the Senate

Stratton is a Chicago native. She served a term in the Illinois House of Representatives before she was elected lieutenant governor alongside Gov. JB Pritzker in 2018, and she was reelected with him in 2022. She has served as the second highest executive officer in the state since then.

To reach Tuesday night, Stratton first won a contentious Democratic primary in March. In that race she defeated two sitting Chicago area members of Congress, Reps. Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi, who had also sought the nomination to succeed Durbin.

In the general election campaign, Stratton took progressive positions, including support for a $25 national minimum wage, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a Medicare for All health insurance system, FOX 32 Chicago reported. Tracy, an attorney in Springfield who has served as chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, attacked those positions as extreme.

The end of the Durbin era

Durbin, 81, first won election to the Senate in 1996, during the Clinton administration. He chose not to run for reelection this year. He was one of several older Democratic members of Congress from Illinois who stepped aside in this cycle, along with Reps. Danny Davis and Jan Schakowsky.

Stratton will be seated in the Senate on January 3, NBC Chicago reported. She heads to Washington hoping to be part of a Democratic majority, as her party targeted possible pickups in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Texas on the same night. A Stratton win on its own is a hold for Democrats, not a flip, and control of the chamber will be decided by the full set of results across the country.

For Illinois voters, the change is still a large one. The state will have a new senator for the first time in 30 years, and the seat passes from the Senate leadership ranks in Washington to a Chicago politician whose career was built in state government in Springfield.