Rep. Massie, congressional contrarian, faces primary challenge ‘to the Trump of me’
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Rep. Massie, congressional contrarian, faces primary challenge ‘to the Trump of me’
No new challengers for Barr at deadline. Who else filed to run in 2022?
Among Washington elites, Thomas Massie is a gadfly whose strict adherence to libertarian ideology places him on a lonesome edge even within the Republican Party.
To his primary challenger in Kentucky, he’s not conservative enough.
“On Twitter I think that he has this persona that he’s very, very conservative and a lot of people believe it,” said Claire Wirth, the 33-year-old Prospect real estate agent running to oust Massie in May’s 4th Congressional District GOP primary. “But when it comes down to his voting record, he votes with AOC and Ilhan Omar more than any other Republican member of Congress.”
It’s a flashy charge that aims to portray the five-term incumbent as out of sync with his party and more interested in proving a point than solving problems. But Massie, who skewered his 2020 primary challenger by 62 points, thinks Wirth has already missed her moment.
“There’s no room really to the right of me,” he said in a recent interview. “Claire is campaigning in an alternative reality when she says I don’t vote conservatively. I just don’t think she has a lane. When Trump was president, running to the Trump of me sort of made sense. She’s still in this alternate universe where he’s still president.”
Still, Wirth’s only real shot at a mammoth upset would be to land the endorsement of former President Trump, who tangled with Massie over coronavirus relief and called for him to be tossed out of the party.
So Wirth has been gently courting the former president at events in Mar-a-Lago, live-streaming from a November fundraiser for another candidate, declaring, “I just had a great conversation with our president tonight – our president – and he is coming back. And he’s going to save America, and he’s going to save Kentucky.”
“Keep watching out. Keep watching out for the America First Trump candidates that are going to come out and we’re going to take back our country,” she continued, with Trump’s voice booming in the background of the video.
But months later, she’s still watching and waiting.
“I think that he really likes me,” Wirth said, when asked about the prospects of landing Trump’s full and total support. “We hope to get his endorsement. I don’t think he’s against endorsing us, I can say that.”
Wirth said her impetus to challenge Massie originated with his vote to certify the 2020 presidential election. One-hundred-and-thirty-nine House Republicans, including Rep. Hal Rogers, voted to overturn Trump’s defeat despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
But Massie, who clashed with Trump over coronavirus relief, doesn’t believe it’s Congress’ role to overrule the Electoral College and argued that doing so would be akin to siding with Democrats’ wish to federalize elections.
“The only thing worse than letting Congress override every election is letting the vice president override every election,” he explained in a recent interview. “Basically every president would be a two-term president if his vice president got to decide what were the actual results of the election.”
He pointed the finger at Trump’s own attorneys general, noting that neither of the president’s final two chief law enforcement officers chose to pursue litigation regarding the election.
“They don’t even want to hear anymore,” Wirth claims. “When you say ‘certify,’ they’re like, ‘I’m done with this guy.’”
Wirth is also targeting Massie’s votes against funding for the border wall, which Massie acknowledges doing on a few occasions due to his objection to former President Trump using national emergency powers to reappropriate money from the military for that purpose.
“I think it’s bad for our country if you allow a president to say it’s an emergency when he disagrees with Congress,” Massie said.
He also said another of his votes against border funding actually stemmed from a provision that would have included an E-verify program for businesses to screen their employees’ immigration status.
“Just like I don’t believe in vaccine passports or that employers or business owners should have to check the records of customers and employees for Covid vaccination, I don’t think private employers need to get the government’s permission in order to hire somebody,” Massie said.
He’s responded to Wirth’s critique with a mailer that outlines five other instances in which he cast votes to secure the southern border.
It’s the reason he’d prefer voting on individual items rather than an omnibus bill that includes hundreds of different spending provisions rolled into one vote.
Massie’s campaign commissioned a poll in February that showed him with a 68-point lead over Wirth, and with another candidate named George Washington actually in second place.
And he boasts the support of other national conservative agitators like Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
It may explain why Trump is staying out of it.
Even when the frustrated former president denounced Massie in 2020, he never mobilized behind a primary opponent against him. And Massie didn’t flinch.
Scott Jennings, a Republican consultant who is also Massie’s constituent, said even if Wirth secured Trump’s endorsement it probably wouldn’t matter.
“I think if Donald Trump endorsed Massie’s opponent, it would not matter,” Jennings said. “He’s pretty strong. And I think a lot of it you can chalk up to personal. He’s unabashedly who he is. There’s something very authentic about Thomas. [Voters] appreciate the fact he votes and acts consistently.”
Jennings, who falls firmly into the traditional wing of the Republican Party, noted he disagrees with Massie often, but finds him honest and personally endearing.
“The guy casts a lot of votes that make me cringe … but I’m gonna vote for Thomas Massie,” he said.
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 10:03 AM with the headline "Rep. Massie, congressional contrarian, faces primary challenge ‘to the Trump of me’."
