Dem Sen. Dick Durbin to Retire After 44 Years in Congress

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the top-ranking Democrat on Senate Judiciary Committee, will retire after 44 years in Congress.

After The New York Times reported the news Wednesday, Durbin quickly came out with the announcement with a Wednesday post on X.

"The decision of whether to run for re-election has not been easy," he wrote, linking to a video. "I truly love the job of being a United States Senator. But in my heart, I know it's time to pass the torch.

"So, I am announcing today that I will not be seeking re-election at the end of my term."

Durbin said he was "truly grateful" for being the longest-running senator in the state of Illinois' history.

Durbin will be ending his more than four-decade career representing Illinois and piling more pressure on the party as it already faced a difficult path to reclaiming a majority in the Senate.

The decision by Durbin, who is in his fifth Senate term and is the chamber's No. 2 Democrat, will set off a flurry of activity among a scrum of would-be successors, both Democrat and Republican. But in a state that has grown more solidly Democrat, the GOP has captured a Senate seat just twice for six-year terms since 1984.

"The decision of whether to run has not been easy," Durbin said in the 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, who is 80, was first elected to the U.S. House in 1982 and served seven terms before succeeding his mentor, Paul Simon, in the Senate in 1996. From that post, he helped shape the career of an up-and-comer, Barack Obama, who was only four years into his first term in the Senate when he was elected president.

Durbin also sits on the Appropriations and Agriculture committees. His caucus colleagues have chosen him as Democrat whip, the party's No. 2 position, biennially since 2005.

He has been consistently liberal in Congress. Govtrack's 2024 report card on Congress lists him as the Senate's 14th most liberal member — right behind Illinois' junior senator, Tammy Duckworth.

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 former 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 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.

And with Republican and Democrat co-sponsors, Durbin pushed the First Step Act, which President Donald 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.

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 11-term Republican incumbent congressman Paul Findley, best known for his criticism of American policy toward Israel and support of Palestinians.

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

Material from The Associated Press was used to compile this report.