Dick Durbin Out!

Out with the old, in with the old. Dick Durbin retires. Robin Kelly wants in.

Looks like we gonna have to have Chicago Style Pizza.

The old guard.

David Hogg stated that he will organize a group to primary ineffective Democrats and old members. It is time for the Democrats to get their actions together.

Any candidate that supports Israel must be primaried. Any Democrat or Republican candidate that puts Israel ahead of the United States is either a proud Zionist or a warmonger.

The U.S. is declining thanks to President Donald J. Trump and former president Joe Biden. If any candidate continues to embrace these two, they're on my list of targets to defeat.

Trump is purposely divided the country, is currently destroying our economy (again) and complicit in a genocide.

Biden purposely divided the country, has failed to deliver on the economy and is complicit in a genocide.

History will not be kind to George W. Bush, Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is the latest member to announce retirement.

The Minority Whip of the Senate joins Democrats Tina Smith of Minnesota, Gary Peters of Michigan and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.

Republicans have former Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and John Cornyn of Texas are on the bubble of retirement.

Durbin is a Zionist.

He supported giving aid and comfort to Israel. The people who want the seat are likely supporting the status quo.

Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL) announced her bid. If elected, she will be the fourth African American to hold a Senate seat from Illinois. Kelly supports Israel. She is 70 years old.

Durbin said last Wednesday he will not seek reelection in 2026, ending his more than four-decade career representing Illinois and accelerating a generational shift in Senate Democratic leadership where he has long held the No. 2 position.

Durbin, 80, is in his fifth Senate term and was first elected to the House in 1982. His decision not to run will set off a scramble for his Senate seat in solidly Democratic Illinois and for his leadership position in Washington as many in the party agitate for a new and more aggressive approach to confronting Republican President Donald Trump in his second term.

“The decision of whether to run has not been easy,” Durbin said in a video posted to X. “I truly love the job of being a United States senator. But in my heart I know it’s time to pass the torch.”

Durbin served seven terms in the House before succeeding his mentor, Paul Simon, in the Senate in 1996. Durbin has been the No. 2 Senate Democrat since 2005. From that post, he helped shape the career of an up-and-comer from Illinois, Barack Obama, who was only four years into his first term in the Senate when he was elected president. Obama said in a post on X after Durbin’s announcement that “I would not have been a United States Senator – and certainly would not have been President – had it not been for Dick’s support.”

As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Democratic President Joe Biden’s term, Durbin led the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022. He also organized the Democrats’ pushback when Trump and Senate Republicans pushed through the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in late 2020.

Durbin is part of a Senate leadership team that has been in place for almost two decades, alongside the current Senate Democratic leader, New York’s Chuck Schumer, 74, and the late Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who retired in 2017 and died in 2021. The race for Durbin’s No. 2 spot is likely to be seen as an early test for who could eventually replace Schumer as younger members of the caucus have eyed a new generation of leaders.

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, one of the Democrats who is considered a possible contender for the second-ranking job, put out a statement within minutes of Durbin’s announcement saying that Durbin has been “a pillar of leadership, integrity, and unwavering dedication to the people of his home state of Illinois and the nation.”

Robin Kelly wants to be the next senator. If elected, she will be the sixth Black woman to be a U.S. senator and fourth from Illinois.

Among Durbin’s more significant legislative achievements, he is largely credited with putting in motion the movement to ban indoor smoking. Having watched his 53-year-old father die of lung cancer when he was 14, Durbin won approval of legislation he sponsored in 1987 prohibiting smoking on short commercial flights and expanded it to nearly all domestic flights two years later.

“People started asking, ‘If secondhand smoke wasn’t safe on airplanes — why is it safe in public buildings, schools, hospitals or restaurants?’ The answer is simple: It’s not,” Durbin said on the 25th anniversary of the law.

In the early 2000s, he introduced the DREAM Act, which would give immigrants in the U.S. illegally who grew up in the country a pathway toward U.S. citizenship.

It has never become law, but in 2010, Durbin and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., wrote Obama asking him to stop deporting so-called Dreamers. Obama responded with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which has covered about 830,000 immigrants, according to Durbin’s office.

Durbin was also instrumental in reversing a war on drugs-era law that penalized crack cocaine in a 100-to-1 ratio to powder cocaine, a law that disproportionately hit Black defendants with long prison terms. The new law was made retroactive, reducing the sentences for those serving time for crack.

With Republican and Democratic co-sponsors, Durbin pushed the First Step Act, which Trump signed into law in 2018. The criminal justice system revamp aimed to make sentencing laws fairer and provide programs to help people who are incarcerated transition in returning to society.

Illinois usually votes Democrats in but lately we don't know what the future holds for the party if they continue to stay in the status quo.

Richard Durbin was born in 1944 in East St. Louis. In 1966, after graduating from Georgetown University, he interned for Sen. Paul Douglas, whose seat he now holds. It was Douglas, who lost election to a fourth term in 1966, who once mistakenly called him “Dick,” a nickname Durbin adopted.

Durbin earned a law degree from Georgetown and worked as legal counsel for Simon, who was lieutenant governor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then for the Legislature through the 1970s. In 1978, Durbin made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, after which he maintained a private legal practice and co-owned a Springfield tavern.

A redrawn district, an economic recession and funding from pro-Israel forces were factors when in 1982 Durbin ousted Paul Findley, an 11-term Republican congressman who was best known for his criticism of American policy toward Israel and support of Palestinians.

In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore considered Durbin for the vice presidency, before chose Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. But a few years later, Durbin influenced another presidential candidate when he served as a sounding board for and adviser to Obama.