A decade-long rise that began with Juliana Stratton watching state politics unfold on television culminated Tuesday, when voters elected the Democratic lieutenant governor to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, according to The Associated Press.

The AP called the race less than a minute after polls closed. No estimated vote had yet been counted.

Stratton is set to become the fourth Black senator in Illinois history, after Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama and Roland Burris, who was appointed to the post by disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The race was Illinois’ first open-seat contest for the U.S. Senate since 2010. Voters first sent Durbin to the Senate 30 years ago this week, and he rose to become the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat before announcing last year that he would not seek a sixth term.

The often-sleepy general election campaign was a sharp contrast to the bruising, expensive Democratic primary that preceded it in March. In a crowded field dominated by Stratton and U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, Stratton won with 40.4% of the vote. She beat Krishnamoorthi by almost 8 percentage points, even though his campaign spent about $28 million, and Kelly by more than 22 percentage points.

Stratton’s decisive edge came from Gov. JB Pritzker. The billionaire governor, who picked Stratton as his running mate in 2018 even as she was still in the midst of her first term as a state representative, endorsed Stratton the day after she entered the Senate race. More importantly, he put $10 million into Illinois Future PAC, a super PAC run by former Pritzker aides that backed Stratton’s campaign, and appeared alongside Stratton in her most notable TV commercial with the tagline, “F−−− Trump, vote Juliana.”

Pritzker stayed at Stratton’s side through the campaign’s final days, including a series of get-out-the-vote rallies Monday from Collinsville to Rockford. Her victory further consolidates Pritzker and his allies’ influence over Illinois Democrats as he decides his own political future, including a possible 2028 presidential bid.

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Tracy, by contrast, ran a relatively quiet campaign. He and Stratton met before voters only once, at a forum on WTTW-Ch. 11. He did little campaigning the final weekend before the election and instead spent Halloween with family in Jacksonville. And even before Election Day arrived, his campaign declared it would not hold an election night party, a sign of low expectations.

A 76-year-old Springfield attorney whose parents founded Mount Sterling-based Dot Foods, one of the state’s largest family-owned businesses, Tracy loaned his campaign $4.25 million, but he raised relatively little from outside donors.

His candidacy also capped an unusual political path. Tracy ran for a Springfield-area state Senate seat as a Democrat in 2002. He later joined the GOP, finished a distant third in the party’s 2010 lieutenant governor primary, and led the state party from 2021 until he resigned in 2024 amid infighting.

Tracy’s loss adds another deep wound for Illinois Republicans who have not won a statewide race in Illinois since 2014. The GOP’s last U.S. Senate win came in 2010, when Mark Kirk defeated Alexi Giannoulias, now secretary of state and a candidate for Chicago mayor.

Nationally, Democrats entered Election Day with cautious optimism that voter dissatisfaction with the Republican Party under President Donald Trump could put Senate control within reach, even in states where Trump won resoundingly two years ago. In Illinois, where Democrats not only hold every statewide office but also have held supermajorities in the Illinois General Assembly, that optimism was even more pronounced.

The national fight intruded on the final days of the Illinois races. On Sunday, Michigan Democratic U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed in that state’s pivotal Senate race. A visibly frustrated Stratton called Stevens’ move a “betrayal.”

Stratton spent the final hours of the campaign hitting traditional locations for Chicago politicians on Election Day: Manny’s Deli in the South Loop, the 95th Street Red Line at rush hour, and a polling place in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. She planned to hold her election night party with the state Democrats at the Ramova Theatre in Bridgeport. Tracy campaigned in Tinley Park, Bloomington and Springfield on Tuesday, a campaign spokesperson said.

Before polls closed Tuesday evening, guests trickled into Stratton’s election night party at the Ramova. National election night coverage from NBC News played on a big screen at the venue, and some early-arriving guests cheered when early results showed Democrats running in other states leading in their respective races.

Because Illinois held its primary election early in the year, Stratton largely avoided much of the national narrative surrounding prominent progressive candidates elsewhere, such as El-Sayed in Michigan. Stratton doesn’t identify as a democratic socialist, and she’s been hesitant to label herself otherwise.

Nevertheless, she campaigned on a progressive agenda and championed progressive policies, including a $25 minimum wage, Medicare for All and changes to the U.S. Supreme Court. She also called for abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement raids in the Chicago area last year.

She’s stopped short of pushing for a moratorium on data center construction, but she’s called for guardrails to ensure they don’t raise energy costs.

Tracy focused on the cost of living, taxes and political polarization. He sought to paint Stratton as a socialist who would make impeaching Trump her top priority, following a national Republican playbook of casting Democrats as too far left.

At the WTTW forum, he called her proposed $25 minimum wage “a death sentence for small businesses everywhere.” He also tried to toe the line between showing he supported many of Trump’s policies while also suggesting he wouldn’t be a rubber stamp for the president. Stratton used the forum to blast “corporate greed,” saying the Trump administration has encouraged it.

Stratton, 61, grew up on the South Side and lives in Bronzeville.

A longtime mediator who also worked for stints at the University of Illinois Chicago and on criminal justice reform in Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s office, Stratton entered elected office after winning a Democratic primary in 2016 against a sitting state legislator, a race that cost both sides $6 million.

As she often recalled on the campaign trail, Stratton entered that race after watching the news and seeing that the incumbent, state Rep. Ken Dunkin, sided with Republican then-Gov. Bruce Rauner on cuts to childcare and senior services.

At the time, Stratton was caring for her mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease. She said she saw her state representative making problems worse for her family and others, so she decided to run.

She served less than one term in the Illinois House when Pritzker tapped her as his running mate.

As lieutenant governor, Stratton’s priorities included promoting equity in women’s health and leading a program aimed at putting tax dollars from cannabis sales into the communities most affected by the war on drugs.

She launched her Senate campaign more than a year and a half ago, entering the race before Krishnamoorthi or Kelly.