Massie Ousted by Trump-Backed Challenger in Kentucky Primary
Farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein prevailed over Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) in a closely watched primary race on Tuesday evening, bringing to an end the most expensive U.S. House primary on record.
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Massie, who has represented Kentucky’s fourth district since 2012, is one of several lawmakers to lose a seat this cycle thanks to a retribution campaign Trump has undertaken against legislators who have dared to cross him.
The bad blood between Massie and Trump dates back to the president’s first term. As early as 2020, Trump called the Kentucky Republican a “third-rate grandstander” after Massie voted against the president’s Covid-19 relief package.
While Trump and Massie seemed to make amends, with Trump endorsing Massie for reelection in 2022, the president’s second term has seen the pair butt heads repeatedly over a slew of issues, from the Iran war to tariffs.
Trump on Monday blasted Massie as an “obstructionist and a fool.”
Massie, who also controversially opposed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” worked with Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California to advance a bill in Congress to compel the Trump administration to release government files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Massie’s opposition to U.S. aid to Israel and his vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism made him a target of not only the president but the Republican Jewish Coalition and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as well. Both groups have spent more than $4 million on anti-Massie ads.
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Altogether, a record-breaking $32 million was spent on ads in the race. A super PAC started by Trump campaign strategists, MAGA KY, has spent nearly $7 million on ads encouraging voters to oust Massie.
Massie and his allies, meanwhile, have run more than $13 million in ads, some of which seek to paint the incumbent as more closely tied to the president than his challenger.
“I agree with President Trump a whole lot more than I disagree with him,” Massie says in one ad.
Trump’s endorsements previously proved determinative in the Louisiana Senate race — where Senator Bill Cassidy was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger in the Republican primary — as well as in the Indiana State Senate primary, where most of Trump’s favored candidates ousted incumbents who had drawn Trump’s ire by voting against his redistricting plan.
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