Durbin says he will run for No. 2 spot if Dems win Senate majority

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on Tuesday he intends to run for his party’s No. 2 spot if Democrats win the majority in November, amid chatter about who might chair the Judiciary Committee.

“I’ll depend on the caucus for my future. I hope they believe I have served them well and give me a chance to continue,” Durbin said, asked if he wanted to be the whip if Democrats win control of the Senate in November.

Pressed if he was saying he intends to run for the position, which is the caucus’s top vote-counter, Durbin responded, “I do.”

Durbin’s decision to say that he wants to be whip — a position that he currently holds for the Democratic caucus while they are in the minority — comes amid public pressure for the party to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) as the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel.

Durbin has not expressed a public interest in becoming Judiciary Committee chairman, and has declined to speculate on Feinstein’s future as the top Democrat on the panel. 

But he would not be the first Democratic senator to hold both the No. 2 spot and a chairmanship. In recent history, then-Democratic Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) chaired the Ethics Committee simultaneously, the late Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) chaired the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee while he was majority whip and the late Sen. Russell Long (D-La.) served as the Finance Committee chairman as part of his tenure as whip. 

Progressives have been publicly fuming over Feinstein’s handling of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination, where she thanked Graham for how he ran the four-day hearing and was spotted giving him a hug.

If Democrats win back the majority, Feinstein is in line to become the chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee.

Asked late last week about the calls for her to be replaced as the top Democrat on the panel, her office pointed to a statement where she defended Democrats’ handling of the committee.

“The Senate is structured so the majority had absolute control over this process. When Republicans signaled they’d move ahead in the face of all objections, the only thing we could do was show this nominee would radically alter the court, and we accomplished that,” Feinstein said in a statement on Friday.

Top Democrats have not publicly weighed in on the pressure from progressives to replace Feinstein atop the committee, and committee chairs are typically selected by seniority.

Beyond Feinstein, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who previously chaired the panel, is on the committee but expected to take over the Appropriations gavel if Democrats take over the majority.

After Durbin, Democrats on the committee, in order of seniority, are: Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Chris Coons (Del.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.).

—Updated Thursday at 3:58 p.m.