Juliana Stratton Wins Illinois Senate Race to Succeed Dick Durbin

Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (D) won the race to succeed retiring five-term Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on Tuesday, defeating Republican Don Tracy.

The Associated Press declared Stratton the winner of the race. Stratton, who was twice elected lieutenant governor alongside Gov. JB Pritzker (D), defeated Tracy, an attorney and former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party. She will succeed Durbin, who is retiring after five terms in the Senate. With less than one percent of votes counted, Stratton had received 70.6 percent of the vote, compared with Tracy’s 28.1 percent. Whitfield Harrington Jr., of the American Constitution Party, had received 1.3 percent.

During a March 18 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press NOW,  Stratton called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying, “I’ve made it clear that I don’t think that this agency can be reformed.” She called for investing in “immigration judges and social services and community-based resources,” adding, “What does not work — and I don’t think anyone would say it does — is criminalizing our immigrant neighbors. That’s unacceptable.” Stratton also said that “ICE and CBP [need] to get out of American cities” and criticized placing ICE under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), saying it approaches immigrant communities through a “punitive lens” rather than focusing on “how we provide support and really get people on a path to citizenship.” She also called for providing “a pathway for DACA recipients and DREAMers.”

During an August 5, 2025, appearance on CNN’s News Central, Stratton responded to former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s remarks that Democrats had redistricted him out of his congressional district and that mid-decade redistricting was a “pure power grab.” Asked about Illinois Democrats holding 14 of the state’s 17 congressional seats, Stratton said, “We have competitive districts here in Illinois. And the reason why those competitive districts have gone to Democrats is because Gov. Pritzker (D) and I have delivered big things for the people of Illinois.” She cited protecting “reproductive freedoms” and “civil rights,” creating jobs, and putting Illinois “on the path to a clean energy future,” adding, “And that’s why, in those competitive districts, they have gone Democrat.”

During a September 1, 2025, appearance on CNN’s The Lead, Stratton said the Trump administration wanted to “come with this aggressive attack, see if they can provoke some kind of reaction, and then come back and say, later, well, this is why we need to now federalize national troops.” Addressing federal immigration enforcement, she said agents were “snatching people off the streets and stuffing them into unmarked cars” with “no due process whatsoever.” Stratton called for peaceful protests, saying, “We are seeing, not just the rise of authoritarianism, we are seeing it — we’re staring it, quite frankly, right in the face.” She added, “We are not going to roll out the red carpet for a wannabe dictator like Donald Trump.”

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