Washington (AP) – Sen. Dick Durbin Illinois said on Wednesday that he would not ask for re -election in 2026, ending his career more than four decades representing Illinois and accelerating a generational change in the democratic leadership of the Senate where he has long held post No. 2.
Durbin, 80, is in His fifth term of the Senate And was elected for the first time to the House in 1982. His decision not to appear will trigger a race for his headquarters in the Senate in the solidly democratic Illinois and for his position of management in Washington, because many in the party agitate for a new more aggressive approach to face the republican president Donald Trump in his second term.
“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 served seven mandates in the House before succeeding his mentor, Paul Simon, in the Senate in 1996. Durbin has been the Democrat in Senate No. 2 since 2005. From this post, he helped shape the career of an arrival of Illinois, Barack Obamawho was only four years after his first mandate in the Senate when he was elected president. Obama said in an article on X after Durbin’s announcement that “I would not have been an American senator – and would certainly not have been president – if it had not been Dick’s support”.
As chairman of the Senate judicial committee during the mandate of Democratic President Joe Biden, Durbin managed Confirmation of the Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson In 2022. He also organized the discharge of Democrats when Trump and the Senate Republicans pushed through Confirmation of judge Amy CONEY BARRETT At the end of 2020.
Durbin is part of a management team of the Senate which has been in place for almost two decades, alongside the Democratic leader of the current Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, 74, and the late leader of the majority Harry Reid, of Nevada, who retired in 2017 and died in 2021. The race in Durbin n ° 2 is likely to be considered a new leaders.
Hawaii senator, Brian Shatz, one of the Democrats who is considered a possible competitor for the second -class position, published a declaration in the minutes of the announcement of Durbin saying that Durbin was “a pillar of leadership, integrity and unwavering dedication to the inhabitants of his original state, Illinois and the country”.
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.
He never became the law, but in 2010, Durbin and Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Wrote Obama asking 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 also played a decisive role in the inversion of a war against the drug law which penalized cocaine crack in a 100 for 1 cocaine powder report, 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.
With Republican and Democrats, Durbin pushed The first step on steptrumper 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 Paul Findley, a member of the republican congress of 11 mandates who was best known for his criticism of American policy towards Israel and the support of the Palestinians.
In 2000, the Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore considered Durbin for the vice-president, before choosing Senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut. But a few years later, Durbin influenced another presidential candidate when he was used for the Obama advisor.
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O’Connor reported to Springfield, Illinois.
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