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Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
Happy primary day and St. Patrick’s Day! Steve Kornacki gets you ready for the former by laying out the key parts of Illinois that will decide the Democratic Senate race. Plus, Dan De Luce reports on a Trump administration official who is stepping down over the Iran war.
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— Adam Wollner
The counties to watch in Illinois tonight
Analysis by Steve Kornacki
There’s suspense on primary day in the Democratic contest for Senate in Illinois.
Polling has offered a conflicting picture. Some surveys have shown Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi with a lead while others have found Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton surging ahead of him in the race’s closing weeks. Making matters even murkier, most of these polls have been conducted by groups supporting one of these candidates, leaving a wide range of potential outcomes when the (actual) polls close tonight.
The expectation is that Krishnamoorthi and Stratton will vie for top position. Both are far-better funded than the third major candidate, Rep. Robin Kelly. They are vying to succeed Sen. Dick Durbin, who announced last spring he would not seek a sixth term. Given the state’s deep Democratic loyalties, the primary winner is expected to coast to victory in November.
Krishnamoorthi, who represents a district in the northwestern Chicago suburbs, is a fundraising machine who already had nearly $20 million on hand when Durbin said he wouldn’t run. He’s only added to that tally and has been airing ads since last summer, establishing himself as the early favorite.
But Stratton has been boosted late by the super PAC of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is backing her. (So is Sen. Tammy Duckworth.) In the home stretch, Stratton has essentially attained parity with Krishnamoorthi in the money game. There’s agreement that she’s gained significant ground, but whether it’s enough to threaten Krishnamoorthi is less clear.
The counties to watch: Illinois has 102 counties, but the population is heavily slanted to the Chicago area — especially in Democratic primaries.
Cook County, with more than 5 million residents, is split about evenly between the city of Chicago and its inner suburbs; as a whole, Cook will produce about 60% of all votes cast statewide in this primary. The five “collar counties” that border Cook — Will, Kane, DuPage, McHenry and Lake — will comprise another 20% of the vote — meaning that roughly 8 in 10 votes cast statewide will come from just six counties.
All three candidates claim a base in the Chicago area. Half of Krishnamoorthi’s 8th District is in the Cook suburbs, and the rest is in DuPage and Kane. Almost 90% of the Democratic electorate in Kelly’s 2nd District is in either Chicago or the Cook suburbs. And before becoming lieutenant governor, Stratton represented a Chicago-based state legislative district.
If a candidate can win Chicagoland by a sizable margin, that will settle the race. But if no one does, then the 96 down-state counties will come into play. Significant pockets of vote can be found outside St. Louis in the Metro East counties of St. Clair and Madison; in the decidedly liberal college counties of McLean and Champaign; and around the state capital of Springfield in Sangamon County and Rockford in Winnebago County. For that matter, an exceptionally tight race could be settled by the question of who plays in Peoria (County).
The “Kornacki Cam” will go live when polls close in Illinois at 8 p.m. ET. Watch here →
Read more on tonight’s primaries up and down the ballot in Illinois →
National Counterterrorism Center director resigns over Iran war
By Dan De Luce
Joe Kent, a retired Green Beret and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, said he resigned as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center over the war in Iran.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent said in a statement posted on X today. “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
The National Counterterrorism Center oversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists.
Kent worked under Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and the two were political allies. Gabbard has kept a low profile since the war started and has previously criticized U.S. military interventions abroad.
Kent wrote in a letter to Trump posted on X that he supported the president’s values during his first term. But he said Trump had been wrongly swayed by the Israelis and he could not support “sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
Gabbard said in a statement posted on X that Trump was responsible for determining what is and isn’t an imminent threat. Her office, she said, is responsible for coordinating intelligence in order to provide Trump with the best information available.
“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.”
The background: Kent served in the Army Special Forces, undertaking 11 combat deployments during a 20-year career, and later worked at the CIA. His wife, Shannon Kent, a Navy cryptologist, died in a terrorist bombing in Syria in 2019.
His placement at the National Counterterrorism Center was part of a wider effort by the administration to put trusted loyalists and partisan activists in senior government positions in intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy.
Kent also twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Washington’s 3rd District with Trump’s endorsement. In 2022, he prevented GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 attack, from advancing to the general election. (In Washington state, all candidates appear on the same primary ballot regardless of party.) But he lost to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez in the general election. Kent fell short again to her two years later.
Read more →
Follow live Iran war updates →
🗞️ Today's other top stories
- 🇨🇳 Postponed: Trump said he would delay his trip to China for a major summit for “five or six weeks” amid the war on Iran. Read more →
- 🤔 Guessing game: Trump told reporters that one of his predecessors told him he wished he had been the one to bomb Iran, but it appears he has not spoken to any of the four living former presidents. Read more →
- ⚖️ SCOTUS watch: Chief Justice John Roberts said that personal criticism of judges is dangerous and urged prominent figures to dial down the rhetoric, days after Trump launched his most recent broadside against the Supreme Court. Read more →
- 🏛️Floor fight: Senate Republicans voted to bring up the SAVE America Act, kicking off what’s expected to be a highly contentious debate on the floor of the chamber, though it’s unlikely to pass. Read more →
- 🎤 For the record: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is demanding that Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the chair of the Senate Health Committee, hold a hearing to set the record straight that there is no link between vaccines and autism. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Owen Auston-Babcock.
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