After voting to impeach then-President Donald Trump overshadowed his first term in Congress, Rep. Peter Major (R-Mich.) lost the Republican primary on Tuesday to Trump-backed challenger.
Challenger John Gibbs, a former software engineer and Trump administration official, is a more orthodox conservative who believes Trump has won the 2020 presidential election.
His victory in West Michigan’s 3rd congressional district despite Major Crowdfunding Advantageillustrating that loyalty to Trump has become a touchstone in the Republican primary.
“It shows how strongly the party’s rank-and-file voters support Donald Trump and believe the ‘big lie,'” said Jeff Timmer, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, who left the party after Trump was nominated in 2016. .
In an interview with The Huffington Post on July 26, Major, an Iraq War veteran and heir to his supermarket fortune, ruled out the possibility of covering his positions if he lost the primary.
His defeat doubled the number of impeachment-supporting House Republicans who lost the primary.of 10 House Republicans Of those who voted to impeach Trump, four are retiring rather than running for re-election. California Rep. David Wallardo survived the right-wing challenge, albeit without Trump support. South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice lost the primary to a Trump-backed challenger.
Gibbs will face Democratic nominee Hillary Scholten, an immigration attorney, in November.
Brittany Gleeson of The Huffington Post
The nonpartisan redistricting has tilted voters in Michigan’s 3rd district’s new border more Democratic. President Joe Biden will have a nearly 9-point lead in the new seat.
Still, Democrats would prefer to have Scholten face Gibbs rather than Major, citing Gibbs’s less popularity with moderate voters.To this end, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of the House Democrats, spent about $450,000 Play a TV commercial touting Gibbs’ right-wing credentials. Because Gibbs chose not to spend his meager funds on television, the DCCC’s ad was the only one designed to support Gibbs’ bid.
In conversations with voters outside a supermarket in Byron Center, a suburb of Grand Rapids, even local Republicans support Meijer without framing their decisions based on Meijer’s optionality .
“I don’t like him being anti-Trump, but I still think he’s doing a great job,” said financial adviser Ed Dublis.
Brittany Gleeson of The Huffington Post
Major’s vote on impeachment went too far for retired couple Janet and Kim Rush.
“Congress and the House spent too much time trying to bring Trump down when they should have been working on other things,” Kim Rush said.
