Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who announced his retirement from the Senate on Wednesday, said during a Thursday morning interview that “you want to leave" public office "when you can still out the front door.”
“If you're honest about yourself and your reputation, you want to leave when you can still walk out the front door and not be carried out the back door,” Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said during his Thursday morning appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“And I've said whatever your interest may be, whatever issue you want to focus on in Congress, in the Senate, if you stick around a couple terms, your minor is going to be aging,” he added. “You can see it. You can observe it. And you have to make that choice, that decision. I've made mine.”
Durbin, who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, announced in a video on Wednesday that he will be retiring after three decades in the upper chamber.
“The decision of whether to run for reelection has not been easy. I truly love the job of being United States Senator. But in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch. So, I am announcing today that I will not be seeking reelection at the end of my term,” Durbin said in a video.
Durbin's seat will now be the focus of an intense Democratic primary.
Asked on Thursday morning if he agrees with many in the Democratic grassroots, who say it's time for younger politicians to come forward, Durbin said the answer is more “complex.”
“It is not just a question of a number, what your age is? Look at [Sen] Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.], for God's sake, still drawing thousands and thousands of people out for rallies, and he's a few years older than I am," Durbin, 80, said. “The bottom line is, are you competent? Can you still do the job? That's the question the voters should ask."
“But should a new generation be interested in public service? You bet,” he added.
Prior to his time in the Senate, Durbin represented Illinois’s 20th District in the House from 1983 to 1997. He is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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