The Latest: Democrat Duckworth takes Illinois Senate seat

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on congressional races on Election Day 2016 (all times EST):

9:02 p.m.

Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth has unseated first-term Republican Sen. Mark Kirk in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country. Duckworth, a double amputee who lost both legs in the Iraq war, has served two terms in the House.

Kirk, who suffered a stroke in 2012, was considered one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Republicans and was targeted early by Democrats seeking to retake control of the chamber.

Kirk worked for months to convince voters that he’s independent of his party by criticizing GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. But Kirk hurt his own campaign with a series of controversial statements. He had to apologize to Duckworth last month after mocking her immigrant background and her family’s military history.

Duckworth, 48, will be the second Illinois woman to serve in the Senate.

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9 p.m.

The top Democrat in the Senate, New York’s Chuck Schumer, easily beat back a challengeTuesday from Republican attorney Wendy Long to secure a fourth term.

Schumer is a hard-driving lawmaker who rarely shies away from publicity. His mix of partisanship and pragmatism will be tested in a closely divided Senate working with a new president.

Schumer can count supporters in both parties who say the 65-year-old has practical tendencies that will serve him well navigating thorny issues and working across the aisle.

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9 p.m.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, won a second term during a campaign when he wavered repeatedly in his support of the GOP presidential candidate leading the ticket.

He was among a handful who urged Trump to step aside to allow vice presidential nominee Mike Pence to run at the top of the ticket. He also criticized Trump’s refusal to say if he would accept the results of the election. Still, despite his criticism, he said he would vote for Trump.

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9 p.m.

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven won a second term against former Democratic state Sen. Eliot Glassheim, who entered the race at the last minute and struggled to raise money.

Hoeven, 59, a former three-term governor, easily won the Senate seat in 2010. He has focused on energy issues in the Senate.

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9 p.m.

Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran has won a second Senate term after serving seven terms in the House. Moran easily fended off a challenge from Democrat Patrick Wiesner, an attorney and certified public accountant.

Moran raised more than $4.1 million through mid-October while Wiesner received less than $14,000 in contributions.

Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.

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8:29 p.m.

Indiana Republican Rep. Todd Young has defeated former Sen. Evan Bayh in a Senate race that could be crucial to determining party control. The seat is now held by Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who is retiring.

An onslaught of stories about whether Bayh really lived in Indiana and his extended job search in his final year in office undercut his candidacy.

National groups have poured tens of millions of dollars into the Senate race, one of a half dozen nationally that could determine whether Democrats take over the Senate majority.

Young, a three-term congressman from southern Indiana, doesn’t have the name recognition of Bayh, whose father, Birch Bayh, was a senator for 18 years. But Young ran a strong race and was supported by outside groups.

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8:28 p.m.

Alabama’s veteran Republican Sen. Richard Shelby has easily won a sixth term against a Democratic challenger who advocated legalizing medicinal marijuana in this conservative state.

Shelby, 82, is a one-time Democrat who has one of the most consistent records of voting against President Barack Obama in Congress. He has supported the Republican ticket, including Donald Trump.

Shelby easily won the money race: He raised nearly $10 million as of June 30 to less than $4,000 for opponent Ron Crumpton,

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8:05 p.m.

Marco Rubio failed in his bid to end up in the White House, but he’s still going back to Washington. Florida voters elected him to a second term in the Senate on Tuesday.

He had wavered for months before deciding to run for re-election. He beat back a challenge from Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, who has repeatedly tried to link Rubio to Donald Trump.

The two Senate candidates differed starkly on a number of issues — including guns, health care, foreign policy, economic issues and abortion. Each sought to leverage voter discontent with both the GOP and Democratic nominees.

Rubio held onto had a narrow lead in polling going into Election Day over Murphy, who was abandoned by his own party after Democratic bosses decided to pull ad money from expensive Florida and invest it in Missouri, North Carolina and Indiana, instead.

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8 p.m.

Longtime Maryland Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen won a promotion to the upper chamber, winning election to replace popular Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who is retiring after 30 years in the Senate.

Van Hollen, a seven-term Democrat, defeated Republican Kathy Szeliga, minority whip in the state House of Delegates.

Van Hollen, 57, ran as an experienced lawmaker willing to reach across the political aisle to do important work. A key lieutenant to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Van Hollen has focused on budget issues and foreign policy. Szeliga worked to use that experience against him, trying to cast him as an insider of dysfunctional Washington.

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8 p.m.

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal has coasted to an easy re-election against Republican Dan Carter, a little-known state representative from the western part of the state.

After fending off wealthy former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon in 2010, Blumenthal faced little resistance from Carter, who lacked the money to run a blitz of TV ads.

Blumenthal is a longtime politician in the state, having been Connecticut’s longest-serving attorney general before winning his first term in the U.S. Senate. He and Carter appeared together in just one debate, a televised matchup where they disagreed on gun control measures.

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8 p.m.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford has won a full-six year term in the Senate.

Lankford is a former congressman who was elected to serve the last two years of former Sen. Tom Coburn’s term. Lankford won the seat with nearly 68 percent of the vote after Coburn retired in 2014 before his term was up.

7:30 p.m.

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman has defeated former Gov. Ted Strickland in a race that once looked like one of the Democrats’ best bets to flip a Senate seat.

Portman, a former U.S. trade representative and budget director, was first elected to the Senate in 2010. He ran a strong campaign, branding Strickland early on as “Retread Ted” and tying him to Ohio’s sinking economy during Strickland’s governorship, which coincided with the national recession.

Portman kept Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a distance leading up to Tuesday’s election. Portman didn’t campaign with Trump and withdrew his endorsement when a 2005 tape of Trump making lewd comments about kissing and groping women surfaced last month.

Portman’s TV ads touted his work to combat the heroin epidemic, including a new law Portman co-sponsored.

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7 p.m.

Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy has won an eighth term. He’s the Senate’s longest-serving member. The 76-year-old beat back a challenge from Republican businessman Scott Milne.

Leahy was first elected in 1974 from the liberal state. He’s the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and will likely chair the panel if Democrats reclaim the majority.

He says he hopes “reasonable” Republicans in the Senate will agree to perform their constitutional duty of advice and consent on judicial nominees, including the Supreme Court.

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7 p.m.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the South’s first black senator since Reconstruction, has won his first full term.

Scott defeated Democrat Thomas Dixon, a community activist and pastor.

The Senate’s only black Republican, Scott said he would vote for Donald Trump, even as he has characterized some of Trump’s statements and actions as “disgusting,” ”indefensible” and “racially toxic.”

Scott, one of only two black senators, said on the Senate floor this summer that he has repeatedly been pulled over by law enforcement and was once even stopped by a Capitol Police officer who apparently did not believe he was a senator.

Scott, 51, was appointed to the seat in 2013 following the resignation of Sen. Jim DeMint, then won election to the final two years of that term.

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7 p.m.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who made an early run for the presidency, instead is heading back to Washington for a second term.

Paul defeated Democrat Jim Gray, the mayor of Lexington.

Paul repeatedly clashed with Donald Trump during the GOP primary debates. He later endorsed Trump but spoke little about him while campaigning for re-election.

The candidates spent a combined $8 million on the race, a paltry sum considering the more than $47 million Kentucky’s Senate candidates spent in 2014. The Senate race has been overshadowed by the presidential race and the battle for the state House of Representatives — the only legislative chamber in the South still controlled by Democrats.

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5 p.m.

Control of Congress was up for grabs Tuesday as Republicans’ hopes of protecting their narrow majority in the Senate rested on a handful of states that were toss-ups until the end.

Republicans were expected to retain House control amid Democratic gains that are expected to be modest.

In North Carolina and Missouri, Democrats sought to upset entrenched GOP incumbent senators. In Democratic-leaning states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, Democrats were trying to tie their GOP opponents to Donald Trump.

Democrats needed to pick up four seats to take the Senate majority if Hillary Clinton wins the White House and can send her vice president to cast tie-breaking votes in a 50-50 Senate. They need five seats if Trump wins.

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