SPRINGFIELD, Ill. >> Kathy Salvi, a suburban Chicago personal injury lawyer, won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Illinois today, topping a field of seven candidates.

Salvi, 63, of Mundelein, will take on first-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth in November. Duckworth, a veteran of the Iraq War, is highly popular and was unopposed in the primary. Duckworth, who attended McKinley High School and the University of Hawaii, will be the clear favorite as she seeks a second term in November in a place where Democrats control all statewide offices and voters twice rejected President Donald Trump by double digits.

Salvi, who works in a Chicago-area law firm, is a former Lake County assistant public defender who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006. She campaigned this year on a pledge to work to unify her party and maintains Duckworth is beatable because the fall election will be about the success or failure of the Biden administration.

While Illinois has elected GOP senators in the recent past, Duckworth defeated the most recent Republican to hold a seat — moderate Sen. Mark Kirk — by more than 10 points in 2016.

Salvi beat Peggy Hubbard, 58, a southwest Illinois political activist who attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and promotes the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election. Others who ran included two other Republicans who ran have been on the ballot in previous elections — the Rev. Anthony Williams, 67, of Dolton, and Jimmy Lee Tillman II, a Trump supporter and the son of former Chicago Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman.

Trump did not endorse anyone in the race.