Sen. Tammy Duckworth cruises to 2nd term over GOP challenger Kathy Salvi

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Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Tuesday coasted to a second term, fending off a challenge from Republican Kathy Salvi to extend her historic Senate career another six years.

Within an hour of the polls closing, Duckworth had declared victory and Salvi had conceded, though returns were incomplete. Later in the night, with about 72% of precincts reporting, Duckworth led with nearly 57% of the vote compared to 42% for Salvi and less than 2% for Libertarian candidate Bill Redpath.

Duckworth told a cheering crowd at the Adler Planetarium that she was “honored to get to keep working to help every kid in every pocket of Illinois realize their own dreams, too.”

Guests at the wounded Iraq War veteran’s election night party, including Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, were treated to stuffed toy ducks with camouflage shirts emblazoned with the phrase “Tammy Strong.”

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

“I’m going to roll my wheelchair into every office in the Capitol if necessary, working to ensure that our nation’s first great pledge — that everyone has the right to pursue happiness — holds true all these years later,” Duckworth said.

“I‘m going to work to guarantee that everyone who calls this nation home is able to strive toward their version of the American Dream, that every woman actually has a say over her own body, [that] Americans living with disabilities are able to get to work and have that work; that we’re all able to love and marry who we choose; and that DREAMers no longer have to worry that they’ll be forced from the only country that they’ve ever known.”

With her victory, Illinois’ first Asian American senator becomes its first woman reelected to a Senate seat. Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun made history as the state’s first female senator in 1993 but was ousted after one term.

And that’s only the latest trail blazed by Duckworth in her congressional career, which started with two terms in a northwest suburban U.S. House district before she soundly beat Republican former Sen. Mark Kirk for the statewide post in 2016.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Duckworth, a 54-year-old Army National Guard veteran who lost her legs in combat in 2004, is the first female double amputee ever to serve in the Senate, the first member born in Thailand and the first to give birth while in office, as she did in 2018.

Her profile was raised even higher in 2020 when she was named on a short list of potential running mates for President Joe Biden.

Salvi, a personal injury attorney from Mundelein, spent much of her time on the campaign trail painting Duckworth as a “rubber stamp” for Biden.

That messaging never gained much traction with voters, according to polls that showed the Hoffman Estates resident Duckworth with a double-digit lead in the weeks leading up to the election. Nor did it inspire much confidence among GOP donors, who didn’t pour major dollars into Salvi’s campaign coffers to counter Duckworth’s fundraising might.

Kamil Krzaczynski/For the Sun-Times

Salvi’s campaign was also hamstrung on the question of abortion rights, which Duckworth’s campaign made the focal point of the race. The 63-year-old challenger repeatedly ducked the question of whether she’d support a bill proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks.

Duckworth has said she would vote to codify abortion rights into federal law through 24 weeks from the point of viability.

The outcome means that both of Illinois’ sitting U.S. senators can now claim to have beaten a Salvi. Duckworth’s victory comes more than a quarter of a century after the state’s senior senator, Dick Durbin, won his seat in 1996 by trouncing Kathy Salvi’s husband, Al, by more than 15 percentage points.

Durbin will be 81 by the time his seat is next on the ballot in 2026. The five-term Democrat has not announed whether he will run again.

Mitchell Armentrout is a Sun-Times staff reporter. Michelle Meyer is a freelance reporter.