Springfield, ill. (AP) – Sen Democrat. Dick Durbin Illinois said on Wednesday that he was not looking for re -election in 2026, ending his career more than four decades representing Illinois and cutting more pressure on the party because he was already facing a difficult way to recover A majority in the Senate.
Durbin's decision, which is His fifth term of the Senate And is Democrat No. 2 of the Chamber, will trigger a wave of activities among a fray of potential, democratic and republican successors. But in a state which has become more solidly democratic, the GOP has not captured a Senate seat twice for six years since 1984.
“The decision to run was not easy,” said Durbin in a video published at X. “I really like the work of being a American senator. But in my heart, I know it's time to have the torch.”
Durbin, who was 80 years old, was elected for the first time at the American house in 1982 and served seven mandates before succeeding his mentor, Paul Simon, in the Senate in 1996. From this post, he helped shape the career of an arrival, Barack Obamawho was only four years after his first mandate in the Senate when he was elected president.
Durbin is the classification member of the Senate judicial committee and sits on the credit and agriculture committees. His colleagues from the Caucus chose him as a democratic whip, post n ° 2 of the party, at the same time since 2005.
He has always been liberal at the Congress. The Govtrack publication bulletin in 2024 on the congress listed him as the 14th most liberal member of the Senate – just behind the Illinois Junior Senator, Tammy Duckworth.
Among the greater legislative achievements of Durbin, it is widely recognized for having set in motion the movement to ban indoor smoking. After having seen his 53 -year -old father die of lung cancer at the age of 14, Durbin obtained approval from the legislation he sponsored in 1987 by prohibiting smoking on short commercial flights and extended it to almost all domestic flights two years later.
“People started asking:” If secondary smoke was not safe in planes – why is it sure in public buildings, schools, hospitals or restaurants? ” The answer is simple: this is not the case, “said Durbin on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the law.
In the early 2000s, he presented the Dream Act, which would give illegally immigrants in the United States who grew up in the country a path to American citizenship.
It has never become the law, but in 2010, Durbin and Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican of Indiana, wrote Obama to ask him to stop deporting the so-called dreamers. Obama responded with a delayed action for children's arrivals, or DACA, which covered around 830,000 immigrants, according to the Durbin office.
Durbin played a decisive role in the inversion of a war against the drug law which penalized cocaine crack in a 100 per 1 -for -1 report for cocaine powder, a law that has disproportionately struck black defendants with long terms of prison. The new law has been made retroactive, reducing sentences for those who are serving a cracking duration.
And with the Republican and Democrats co-sponsors, Durbin pushed The first step on stepWhat president Donald Trump sign In 2018. The overhaul of the criminal justice system aimed to make laws of determining the penalty more equitable and to provide programs to help people who are imprisoned in transition to the return to society.
Richard Durbin was born in 1944 in East St. Louis. In 1966, after graduating from the University of Georgetown, he carried out an internship for Senator Paul Douglas, whose headquarters he owned. It was Douglas, who lost the elections to a fourth term in 1966, who formerly called him “Dick”, a nickname that Durbin adopted.
Durbin obtained a law degree from Georgetown and worked as a legal advisor for Simon, who was the Lieutenant-Governor in the late 1960s and in the early 1970s, then for the legislative assembly in the 1970s. In 1978, Durbin succeeded in an unsuccessful race for the Lieutenant-Governor, after which he maintained a private legal practice and co-owner Springfield.
A redesigned district, an economic recession and funding for pro-Israeli forces were factors when, in 1982, Durbin ousted the member of the Republican Congress of 11 mandates Paul Findley, better known for his American criticism towards Israel and the support of Palestinians.
In 2000, the candidate for the Democratic presidential election Al Gore considered Durbin for the vice-president, before Gore finally chose Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. But a few years later, Durbin influenced another presidential candidate when he was used for the Obama advisor.
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Jalonick reported to Washington.
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