Former Obama official Duckworth to run for Ill. House seat

Tammy Duckworth, a former assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs, filed Wednesday to run for Congress in Illinois.

Duckworth, the 2006 candidate who lost to Republican Peter Roskam, made her candidacy official Wednesday morning by announcing that she would run in the redrawn 8th congressional district.

"It's time to tell John Boehner, Karl Rove and the Tea Party crowd that you can't balance the budget on the backs of seniors," she said in a statement. "You can't serve multinational corporations first and American families last. And you won't build a better future by tearing down our economy brick by brick and shipping it overseas."

Duckworth recently stepped down from her post at the Department of Veterans Affairs, prompting speculation that she'd run for Congress. A veteran of the Iraq war, where she sustained injuries costing her the use of both legs and part of her right arm, Duckworth is seen as a candidate with a relatively strong profile to mount a House bid.

She's aided by the Democratic-friendly redistricting plan in Illinois. The new 8th district includes parts of Roskam's old district (she lost to the future congressman by 2 percent in 2006) and other western suburbs of Chicago. There's no natural incumbent in the district, though an incumbent Republican could conceivably move there, thereby avoiding an incumbent-versus-incumbent primary in some other nearby district.