The race to succeed five-term Democratic Illinois senator Dick Durbin, which exposed political fault lines from Illinois to Washington, D.C., all but ended in a win for Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton on Tuesday. Stratton emerged victorious in a closely contested Democratic primary over two sitting members of Congress, almost certainly ensuring her win in November in the reliably liberal state — and avoiding an embarrassing setback for the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, who had enthusiastically backed her candidacy.

“We did it tonight. We showed what’s possible when you listen to the people and give the people what they want,” Stratton said at her Election Night party, per the Chicago Sun-Times. “We are ready to take our democracy back into our own hands.”

A former member of the Illinois House of Representatives, Stratton ran a largely progressive campaign, embracing Medicare for All and the abolishment of ICE. She also positioned herself as a strong opponent of the Trump administration, running an ad featuring numerous people bluntly cursing President Donald Trump. “They said it, not me,”........

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