Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) will face challenger Ed Gallrein in Tuesday’s Republican primary, but the incumbent is really locking horns with President Donald Trump.
Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein and decision to deploy his political operation against Massie is what has made this a competitive primary, in addition to an expensive, nasty, and intensely personal one.
Unlike many Republicans who have raised Trump’s ire in the past, Massie can plausibly argue that on a number of issues — Jeffrey Epstein files transparency, no more foreign wars, fighting government surveillance and the “deep state” — he is a MAGA candidate.
But Massie has clashed with Trump since a fight over COVID-19 emergency spending in his first term, and the feud deepened when the libertarian-leaning Kentucky lawmaker partnered with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on legislation to force the release of the Epstein files.
Since former Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress rather than run for reelection after breaking with Trump, Massie’s primary will be the biggest test of whether MAGA is about a set of policies versus trusting Trump, a populist ideological movement rather than a cult of personality dominated by one man who will soon be term-limited out of office.
Trump’s position on this is clear: he gets to decide what MAGA is and define America First, not the lawmakers or podcasters who’ve gone off the reservation. He has long been a supporter of Israel and an opponent of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and he remains a major player in Republican primaries more than a decade into his leadership of the party.
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The president is coming off a run of success, vanquishing rivals in Republican primaries, from Indiana state senators who resisted his congressional redistricting push to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who was eliminated in the first round of GOP voting over the weekend. Trump said Massie is worse than Cassidy.
Massie is also dogged by the perception that Republicans in Congress haven’t done much to advance Trump’s agenda. One of the few exceptions was the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended the Trump tax cuts and funded the president’s deportations push. Massie voted no.
What Republican primary voters normally regard as principled iconoclasm and independence could be folded into their frustration with what they see as a do-nothing GOP Congress, which has endangered incumbents very different from Massie, such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
Trump has blasted Massie as “Rand Paul Jr.” But Massie is arguably the ideological progeny of Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) father, 12-term former Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The elder Paul was nicknamed “Dr. No” based on both his medical practice and tendency to vote against bills that might otherwise pass unanimously.
Massie is one of the last Ron Paul Republicans in the House, and has been able to remain more conservative-coded than former Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who left both the GOP and Congress. But the Pauls have tended to serve in bigger Republican majorities. In this Congress, the GOP’s House majority is so small that Massie’s vote sometimes counts. Rand Paul’s relationship with Trump has been more up-and-down. Ron Paul had an arrangement with GOP leadership that he would vote with them on procedural matters, such as rules votes, even if he opposed their bills on final passage.
Massie sometimes opposes leadership on rules votes. He was the only Republican to vote against reelecting House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) last year.
While most of the Republicans Trump has opposed in primaries are more of the establishment variety, he has helped run strong fiscal conservatives out of their congressional seats before. Former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and former Rep. Mark Sanford are two of the most prominent examples.
There is also a big generational divide in the Republican primary election. A Quantus Insights poll found that voters aged 55 and under backed Massie by double digits, with those aged 26 to 35 supporting him by a 56-point margin, while his challenger boasts similar leads among voters over 56, including a 35-point advantage with the aged 66 to 75 crowd.
This presumably reflects differing views on foreign policy and how to talk about Israel, as well as differences in where these voters get their information. The older voters likely watch more Fox and other cable news. The younger voters might listen more to conservative podcasters who have become critical of Trump over inflation and the war in Iran.
When Trump first demanded lawmakers “throw Massie out of the Republican Party!” in 2020, then Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) was on his side. She donated to Massie’s primary challenger that year, who Trump ultimately did not endorse.
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“The truth is Congressman Massie is a candidate who was born out of the populist Tea Party movement just like President Trump,” a Republican strategist advising Massie told me at the time.
Now, Trump is looking to give Massie the Liz Cheney treatment on Tuesday.