By Jim Ellis — Thursday, April 24, 2025
Senate
Our House Overview series has been postponed a day to cover Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) retirement announcement. We’ll pick it up again with Part III tomorrow and Part IV on Monday.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) / Photo: Center for American Progress Action Fund
When the 119th Congress concludes, Durbin will have completed 44 years of combined elected office service including his time in the Senate and House. He will be 82 years old at the time of the next election and would be 88 if he were to run and serve an entire new term.
Sen. Durbin’s decision means there will be at least five seats open in the next election. Previously, Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), had all announced their retirement intentions.
The Illinois Senate race, due to the state’s strongly Democratic voting history in recent decades, will largely be decided in an open Democratic primary scheduled for next March 17.
Those believed to be interested in running for the seat are Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (D), a trio of US Representatives, Robin Kelly (D-Matteson/Chicago), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Schaumburg), and Lauren Underwood (D-Naperville), and potentially state Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Secretary of State and former US Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias. Several weeks ago, Attorney General Kwame Raoul (D) made a public statement saying he would not run for the Senate even if Sen. Durbin decided to retire.
Stratton was elected on a ticket with Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), so she has not run statewide in her own right. Of all the potential candidates, Rep. Krishnamoorthi has proven himself a fundraising machine. He raised $2.86 million in the 1st quarter of 2025 and has a whopping $19.4 million in his campaign account. In contrast, Rep. Kelly has $2 million while Underwood reports $1.1 million in her campaign treasury.
No major Republican has announced for the Senate seat, and it is unlikely one will considering that the eventual party nominee will be the longest of shots to win the general election. Therefore, a GOP congressional delegation member, either Reps. Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro), Mary Miller (R-Oakland), or Darin LaHood (R-Peoria), will not risk a safe House seat for a statewide bid where the eventual Republican nominee would fail to attract any more than 45 percent of the vote.
Durbin was first elected to the Senate in 1996 and became the Democratic Whip shortly after the 2004 election. He recorded a career statewide mean average election percentage of 58.2 percent, with a high of 67.8 percent in 2008, the year Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was elected President, and a low of 53.5 percent during the Republican landslide election of 2014.
Durbin also served seven terms in the House from, at the time, one of the state’s southern Illinois districts that was anchored in his home city of Springfield and Carbondale. To put in perspective the Illinois loss of representation over the succeeding census periods, when Durbin was first elected to the House in 1982, his state had 22 US House districts. Today, it maintains just 17 seats.
The 2024 election cycle will now feature the first open Illinois Senate election in 20 years, and a very crowded and competitive Democratic primary is expected with all candidates vying to succeed Sen. Durbin. Considering the state’s early primary schedule, expect the political jockeying to begin in earnest very shortly.