Democrat Tammy Duckworth beats Sen. Mark Kirk

Wounded Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth unseated Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk in Tuesday’s election and will become only the second woman to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate.

Duckworth was beating Kirk 55 percent to 40 percent, with 91 percent of the precincts tallied.

Duckworth, a 48-year-old Democratic congresswoman from the northwest suburbs, entered politics after losing her legs and shattering her right arm when her Blackhawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq in 2004.

In her victory speech, Duckworth recounted the horrific incident in “a dusty field in Iraq” and cited the heroism of the National Guard “buddies” who carried her off the battlefield.

“This nation didn’t give up on me when I was at my most vulnerable,” she told supporters, many of whom listened teary-eyed, at a downtown hotel. “I believe in an America that doesn’t give up on anyone who hasn’t given up on themselves.”

She said as senator she would fight for “economic justice” for everyone, recalling that her father lost his job, dumping her family out of the middle class.

“I am here today because of public schools, food stamps, Pell Grants and safety nets designed to help people who have been knocked down — and I’m proud of it,” said Duckworth, whose two-year-old daughter was on stage with her.

Before she was elected from the 8^th Illinois Congressional District in 2013, Duckworth was an assistant secretary in Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs and led the state veterans department.

She will be the state’s first Asian American U.S. senator and the first woman senator from Illinois since Carol Moseley Braun was bounced from office 18 years ago, after one term.

Long considered one of the Senate Republicans most vulnerable to a challenge in generally Democratic Illinois, Kirk ended up as a one-termer, too, and gave only a two-minute concession speech.

He invited Duckworth for a post-campaign drink at Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern, as he and Alexi Giannoulias — the Democrat that Kirk beat in the 2010 Senate race — did after that bitter campaign.

“This coming beer summit will show kids across Illinois that opponents can peacefully bury the hatchet,” Kirk told supporters in Northbrook.

Kirk, 57, suffered a debilitating stroke barely a year after he became a senator, and he hinged his re-election hopes on repeated attempts to distance himself from GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Kirk suffered the stroke in January 2012. A year passed before he could even resume working in Washington full-time. He was left partially paralyzed on his left side but released a letter from his doctor saying he had made a “full mental recovery.”

Still, the senator made a series of verbal missteps that no doubt greatly aided Duckworth’s campaign.

Shortly before the election, Kirk apologized for making racially tinged remarks about Duckworth’s family.

Duckworth — who was born in Bangkok to an American father and an Asian mother — said during a debate that her family had served the nation in military conflicts “going back to the Revolution.”

Kirk replied, “I’ve forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”

Kirk later apologized, saying, “I wasn’t thinking. I made a mistake.”

Kirk had defended himself in August after describing President Barack Obama as “acting like the drug dealer in chief” for giving Iran $400 million on the same day the Middle Eastern country released American hostages.

In response to that, Duckworth said Kirk was “unhinged” and “lacks the ability to control what he’s saying.”

“I just don’t think that’s language befitting of a United States senator, and I think it diminishes the office,” she said.

Last year, Kirk had joked that a Senate colleague who was single was a “bro with no ho,” explaining “that’s what we’d say on the South Side” of Chicago.

A few months earlier, Kirk said he favored growing African-American businesses “so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through.”

In June, he became the first Republican senator seeking re-election to denounce Trump.

“Just because he’s the Republican nominee, doesn’t mean he’s the best for the country,” Kirk said at last week’s final debate.

Kirk called for Trump to drop out after a tape surfaced last month of the GOP White House nominee using derogatory language about women.

The senator wrote in retired Gen. David Petraeus on his presidential ballot Tuesday, a campaign aide said.

While Kirk feuded with Trump, Duckworth benefitted from a prime speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention, walking onto the stage with prosthetic legs and a cane.

In the speech, she took aim at Trump, saying “You are not fit to be commander-in-chief.”