March 18 (UPI) — Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton claimed victory late Tuesday in a close race to be the Democratic Senate nominee in November, as voters headed to the polls to cast ballots in primary elections.
Dozens of local and federal contests were held throughout the state on a busy election Tuesday that included 17 U.S. House races but only one for the Senate — a seat being left vacant by the retiring Dick Durbin, the six-term senator and the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
Stratton claimed victory in a packed race for the Democratic nomination for Durbin’s seat.
“We did it,” she told supporters in her victory speech in Chicago.
“Tonight, we showed what’s possible when you listen to the people and give the people what they want.”
Stratton ran on a progressive platform of securing a single-payer healthcare system and a $25 minimum wage, while rejecting all corporate Political Action Committee funding during her campaign.
U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly emerged as her main political rivals.
Krishnamoorthi told his supporters in a brief speech Tuesday night at the Westin Hotel in Chicago’s River North neighborhood that he had called Stratton to congratulate her on winning the primary.
“I offered her my full support on the road ahead,” he said.
Krishnamoorthi positioned himself as the anti-President Donald Trump Democrat, often railing against the Republican leader and campaigning on his so-called Trump accountability plan of reforms to rein in presidential power to prevent abuses of power.
“Obviously, this is not the result we sought, but unlike Donald Trump, I’m not going to question the outcome,” he said.
“Now we must come together as Democrats and as Americans to make sure that we return to principles that made us a beacon of freedom and opportunity for the world.”
Kelly conceded online.
“Tonight’s isn’t the outcome we wanted, but I am so proud of us, and I still believe in putting people over profits,” she said in a statement.
“You want to know that your elected leaders are fighting for YOU, not distracted by outside noise. I’ll continue that fight in the U.S. house. I still have your back.”
As of early Wednesday, when an estimated 92% of the ballots had been counted, Stratton had secured about 40.1% of the vote share to Krishnamoorthi’s 33.2% and Kelly’s 18.1%, CNN and CBS News reported.
In a statement, Durbin, who did not endorse any candidate in the race, said he looked forward to “passing the torch” to Stratton when his term ends, while congratulating Krishnamoorthi and Kelly.
“Now our attention must turn to ensuring Juliana wins the general election on November 3,” he said. “With Donald Trump in the White House for another two years, the challenges facing our country and state will continue to be historic and unprecedented. We need Juliana Stratton fighting alongside Sen. [Tammy] Duckworth every day.”
On the GOP side, Don Tracy, former Illinois Republican Party chairman, was poised to seek Durbin’s vacant Senate seat as his party’s nominee.
Tracy campaigned in the blue state by positioning himself as a center-right candidate at a time of extremism in his party, stating on his website that he would seek “common sense solutions over extreme agendas.”
He also argued to be a voice for the entire state, voicing concerns that all federal elections had become contests for Chicago and Cook County.
“It’s time to make Illinois a two-party state again,” he said in a statement claiming victory on Facebook, while bashing Stratton as “the most extreme far-left U.S. Senate candidate this state has ever seen.”
“I will push for common sense solutions that make life more affordable for working families. I will work for everyday Illinoisans, not special interests or extreme agendas.”
Tracy was poised to win early Wednesday with nearly 40% of the vote share compared to lawyer Jeannie Evans’ nearly 23%, the closest runner-up, CNN and CBS News reported.
Evans campaigned on being a political outsider and a conservative Republican, while championing lowering costs and fighting crime.
In the governor’s race, Illinois is poised to have a rematch of 2022, when Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, beat Republican farmer Darren Bailey.
While Pritzker ran uncontested, Bailey was seemingly coasting to the GOP nomination in a landslide.
With 94% of ballots counted, Bailey had won 53.5% of the vote share to runner-up Ted Dabrowski’s 28.8%, according to CNN and CBS News tallies.
“The first fight has been won, but make no mistake, we are just getting warmed up,” he said in his victory speech.
“Best birthday ever.”
Bailey ran on a law-and-order campaign that included lowering property taxes, cutting government spending and cracking down on repeated criminal offenders.
American Airlines pilot Captain Steve Scheibner has shared crucial travel tips for passengers – warning them to avoid the seat back pocket he calls a “black hole of despair”
There is a hidden danger to using the back seat on planes, a pilot claims(Image: Captain Steeeve/YouTube)
An airline pilot has issued a stark warning to passengers never to stash their personal belongings in the rear pocket of plane seats for one straightforward reason.
Captain Steve Scheibner is an American Airlines pilot widely recognised by his huge YouTube following as Captain Steeeve. He revealed the advice in a recent video where he offered a string of travel tips for air travellers.
He regularly encounters people at the agent’s desk because of their use of the rear pocket during their journey, experiencing a “fingers crossed” situation where they face “diminishing” chances.
Captain Steve labelled the pocket the “black hole of despair” and cautioned people against placing anything valuable in it whilst they’re flying unless they “don’t ever want to see it again”.
He stated: “Stop putting personal items in the seat back pocket in front of you. If you want to lose it and never see it again, put it in that dark hole that is the seat back pocket in front of you.”
Captain Steve revealed he’d encountered numerous passengers who’d disembarked the aircraft but abandoned personal items in the seat pocket, and were subsequently unable to return to the flight to retrieve them.
He continued: “If the airplane is still at the gate, fingers crossed that somebody who cares can go out there and find the thing that you left in that seat back pocket.
“But the odds are diminishing with every minute that ticks by after you leave that seat and you leave it in that black hole of despair. So, my friends, do not put your personal items in that seat back pocket, unless of course, you don’t ever want to see it again.”
This comes as reports suggest budget airline passengers could soon experience a peculiar new way of flying – standing-only seats. The novel upright seats, allegedly designed for flights lasting under two hours, would allow passengers to lean rather than sit.
Initially unveiled by Italian company Aviointeriors back in 2018, the ‘Skyrider’ seats would enable airlines to “increase the passenger number by 20%”, resulting in “increased profits”, according to a company spokesperson.
They also maintained that the seats would provide an “increased upright passenger position” whilst ensuring “adequate comfort”. Nevertheless, one expert believes the seats could pose a challenge regarding “perception”.
Dr Akhil Bhardwaj, a former engineer and senior lecturer at the University of Bath’s School of Management, told the Express that such a development would demand “very strict oversight”.
Dr Bhardwaj stated: “The idea of a flying bus that packs passengers might seem appealing, but it might undermine the perception of how the industry thinks about safety. At the very least, such a move requires a very strict oversight and a very clear explanation to the flying public why this is safe.”
Two years after Huntington Beach residents voted to effectively ban Pride flags from being displayed on city property, the conservative coastal city could be represented by a gay member of Congress and outspoken critic of President Trump — Rep. Robert Garcia.
That twist of fate came after last year’s unprecedented mid-decade rejiggering of California’s congressional districts.
Voters in November overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50 — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to neutralize Republican gerrymandering in Texas — to help Democrats win control of the House this November and put a meaningful check on the Trump administration.
The political tremors triggered by the ballot measure already have reshaped California’s political landscape.
Veteran Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of northern San Diego County, an incessant thorn in the backside of President Obama, has called it quits. Northern California Rep. Kevin Kiley has shed his GOP label to run as a political independent. And two Republican congressional incumbents find themselves in a political death match in a newly crafted district straddling Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The new 42nd District remains anchored in Garcia’s home base of Long Beach. But under the new lines, it has swapped out Southeast L.A. communities such as Downey and Bell Gardens for the more MAGA-friendly cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.
“I say that every time a district crosses the L.A.-Orange County border, a Democrat gets its wings,” said Paul Mitchell, the redistricting expert who drew the new lines for Democrats. “Drawing the Long Beach district to go down to Huntington Beach meant that you’re giving Robert Garcia a community that, in its elected City Council, has been real anathema to who he is as a person, being an out gay member of Congress.”
The change means Garcia’s district shifts rightward with a lot more Republican voters, but still has a Democratic majority. Former Vice President Kamala Harris would have still won the new district in the 2024 presidential race by 13 points, making Democrats confident that it’s still one where Garcia could win.
As the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Garcia is poised to win more power in pushing back against the Trump administration if historical precedent holds and Democrats win back the House majority in November.
Garcia was unavailable for an interview, but many of the new voters he will have to court are represented by Rep. Dave Min (D-Irvine), who won the closely divided Orange County seat in 2024 and now faces a slightly bluer voting base in his newly configured district.
“I have a lot of voters to introduce myself to,” said Min, who described himself as “progressive for Orange County” because he cares about protecting civil rights but often aligns with law enforcement and small-business interests.
“The message [to new voters] is that you may not always agree with me, but that I will try my best to do what I say. I will fight to deliver on the promises I make, I will fight for the values that I represent myself as caring about. And I listen to my constituents,” he said, noting that he recently held his seventh town hall since he was elected.
In a neighboring Orange County district, Republican Reps. Young Kim and Ken Calvert are going to battle for control of the region’s only safe Republican seat post-Proposition 50. That district also crosses county lines — into Corona, Chino Hills and other parts of western Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Republicans may be dismayed to see the two popular party leaders battling it out in what promises to be a brutal and expensive election.
Republican “primary voters are looking for how to distinguish between two of the same flavor,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist. “Republican voters are going to like both of them, so how do you make that judgment?
“Often, it comes down to who their friends are,” he said, noting that endorsements from interest groups and other elected officials are usually more valuable in primaries than general elections.
A handful of Democratic candidates have also declared for the seat, which campaign strategists said could split the liberal vote and allow both Calvert and Kim to advance to the general election ballot.
Issa bids farewell, Kiley drops GOP label
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) listens to testimony from witnesses during a House Oversight Committee hearing entitled “Reviews of the Benghazi Attack and Unanswered Questions,” in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in 2013 in Washington.
(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Issa’s decision to forgo a run for reelection came as a surprise Friday, even though speculation has swirled about his future after the newly drawn congressional districts put him in a seat where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans. That was a major downgrade from his current district, which swallows up right-leaning eastern San Diego County and the conservative pockets of Temecula and Murrieta.
“This decision has been on my mind for a while and I didn’t make it lightly,” Issa said in a statement. “But after a quarter-century in Congress — and before that, a quarter-century in business — it’s the right time for a new chapter and new challenges.”
Democrats celebrated the departure of Issa, who helped fund the successful 2003 recall of California Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, and led the congressional investigation of the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi during the Obama administration.
“After over two decades of disastrous representation, Darrell Issa is once again running for the exits — and good riddance,” said Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Several Democrats had already announced plans to challenge Issa, including San Diego City Councilmember Marni Lynn von Wilpert.
Proposition 50 also split the sprawling district held by Kiley, a Republican from Rocklin, into six pieces, leaving the Northern California congressman and frequent Newsom critic with few good options.
Over the following months Kiley posted on social media to announce — like the dating show “The Bachelor” — where he would not run until it came down to two districts: a safe Republican seat that would force Kiley into a primary with longtime Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) or a district with a 9-point Democratic registration advantage.
Kiley chose to avoid challenging McClintock and delivered his final rose to the new 6th District along with a twist: On Friday the congressman announced he would run as an independent candidate rather than a Republican.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) in his office in Washington in 2025.
(Richard Pierrin / For The Times)
In a lengthy social media post and accompanying video, Kiley said he has become “frustrated, sometimes disgusted, by the hyper-partisanship in Congress” and that he answers to constituents, “not party leaders.”
But without a political party behind him, Kiley’s campaign is “entirely his burden,” said Republican strategist Matt Rexroad. “He’s not going to get the party endorsement. He’s really on his own.”
Without a letter denoting a political party next to their name on the ballot, independent candidates have historically gotten lost in the mix.
One other candidate, a Christian author named Michael Stansfield, confirmed Friday that he filed to run for the seat as a Republican, giving Kiley automatic competition for conservative votes.
Several Democrats have already announced campaigns for the seat — which lumps conservative suburbs of Sacramento with liberal-leaning ones closer to the capital city — including former state Sen. Richard Pan, Sacramento Dist. Atty. Thien Ho, West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero and Lauren Babb, a public affairs leader for Planned Parenthood clinics in California and Nevada.
For some longtime Democrats such as Rep. Brad Sherman, the addition of new GOP voters could help them fend off challenges from younger progressive candidates.
Half a dozen Democrats, mostly younger progressives, have filed paperwork to challenge Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), 71, who has represented parts of the San Fernando Valley for nearly 30 years.
The 32nd District remains solidly blue post-Proposition 50, but a nearly seven-point swing to the right “makes it less likely that two Democrats go to the general, which makes it less likely that [Sherman] would get beaten,” said Mitchell.
It’s a similar story for Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento), Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) and John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), who are all in their 70s and 80s and facing younger, more progressive challengers.
While gaining more conservative voters may help some incumbents avoid facing another Democrat in November, the threat of such a faceoff is pushing them to be more active on the campaign trail, Rexroad said.
“You’re seeing more activity by Doris Matsui and Mike Thompson and John Garamendi as a result of them being challenged, because they like their seats and they’d like to hold on to them,” Rexroad said.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
March 7 (UPI) — Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., announced he is retiring at the end of his term and put his support behind San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond.
Issa issued a statement Friday on social media saying he will not be seeking re-election in this year’s midterm elections.
“This decision has been on my mind for a while and I didn’t make it lightly,” Issa wrote. “First, we built the right campaign infrastructure, support has been overwhelming — including from President Trump — and our polling was unmistakable: We would win this race. But after a quarter-century in Congress — and before that, a quarter-century in business — it”s the right time for a new chapter and new challenges.”
Issa offered his “enthusiastic endorsement” to San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond, who filed to run for Issa’s seat on Friday.
The announcement comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s ballot measure to redraw state congressional districts, which passed in November, transformed Issa’s district from safely Republican to an area more friendly to Democrats.
Issa had previously been rumored to be considering a run for Congress in Texas, but he told Fox News in December that the plan would not be going forward.
“I’m thrilled to set the record straight and here’s the truth: Texas House members and residents of that state did ask if I would consider running there following Gavin Newsom’s historically corrupt gerrymander,” he said at the time. “I appreciate the opportunity, but California is my home. I told them I’m going to stay in Congress, and I don’t need to go to Texas for that.”
Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, celebrated the news of Issa’s retirement in a statement.
“After over two decades of disastrous representation, Darrell Issa is once again running for the exits — and good riddance. Issa abandoning his voters now is the clearest sign yet that Republicans know he can’t win on his record of skyrocketing prices, gutting health care, and looking out for himself and wealthy special interests above all else,” Elsasser said. “Any Republican who tries to parachute into this race with the same extreme agenda will face the same fate.”
Christian Martinez, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, praising Issa for his “decades of dedicated service” in a statement provided to Politico.
“We are optimistic that this district will continue to be represented by a Republican who will stand for common sense and reject the radical agenda and chaos that progressive Marni von Wilpert and socialist Ammar Campa-Najjar would bring,” Martinez said.
With control of the House — and Trump’s virtually unchecked authority — dangling by a gossamer thread, he reckoned correctly that Republicans were all but certain to lose power this fall unless something unusual happened.
So he effectively broke the rules.
Normally, the redrawing of the country’s congressional districts takes place once every 10 years, following the census and accounting for population changes over the previous decade. Instead, Trump prevailed upon the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to throw out the state’s political map and refashion congressional lines to wipe out Democrats and boost GOP chances of winning as many as five additional House seats.
The intention was to create a bit of breathing room, as Democrats need a gain of just three seats to seize control of the House.
In relatively short order, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, responded with his own partisan gerrymander. He rallied voters to pass a tit-for-tat ballot measure, Proposition 50, which revised the state’s political map to wipe out Republicans and boost Democratic prospects of winning as many as five additional seats.
Some of those efforts continue, including in Virginia where, as in California, voters are being asked to amend the state Constitution to let majority Democrats redraw political lines ahead of the midterm. A special election is set for April 21.
But as the first ballots of 2026 are cast on Tuesday — in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas — the broad contours of the House map have become clearer, along with the result of all those partisan machinations. The likely upshot is a nationwide partisan shift of fewer than a handful of seats.
The independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which has a sterling decades-long record of election forecasting, said the most probable outcome is a wash. “At the end of the day,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, “this doesn’t really benefit either party in a real way.”
Well.
That was a lot of wasted time and energy.
Let’s take a quick spin through the map and the math, knowing that, of course, there are no election guarantees.
But suppose Texas Republicans gain five seats as hoped for and California Democrats pick up the five seats they’ve hand-crafted. The result would be no net change.
Elsewhere, under the best case for each party, a gain of four Democratic House seats in Virginia would be offset by a gain of four Republican House seats in Florida.
That leaves a smattering of partisan gains here and there. A combined pickup of four or so Republican seats in Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri could be mostly offset by Democratic gains of a seat apiece in New York, Maryland and Utah.
(The latter is not a result of legislative high jinks, but rather a judge throwing out the gerrymandered map passed by Utah Republicans, who ignored a voter-approved ballot measure intended to prevent such heavy-handed partisanship. A newly created district, contained entirely within Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, seems certain to go Democrats’ way in November.)
In short, it’s easy to characterize the political exertions of Trump, Abbott, Newsom and others as so much sound and fury producing, at bottom, little to nothing.
But that’s not necessarily so.
The campaign surrounding Proposition 50 delivered a huge political boost to Newsom, shoring up his standing with Democrats, significantly raising his profile across the country and, not least for his 2028 presidential hopes, helping the governor build a significant nationwide fundraising base.
In crimson-colored Indiana, Republicans refused to buckle under tremendous pressure from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other party leaders, rejecting an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map and give the GOP a hold on all nine House seats. That showed even Trump’s Svengali-like hold on his party has its limits.
But the biggest impact is also the most corrosive.
By redrawing political lines to predetermine the outcome of House races, politicians rendered many of their voters irrelevant and obsolete. Millions of Democrats in Texas, Republicans in California and partisans in other states have been effectively disenfranchised, their voices rendered mute. Their ballots spindled and nullified.
