The New York Times
10 Republicans voted to accuse Trump. The reaction was quick.
Less than two weeks have passed since Representatives Peter Meijer, Tom Rice and Liz Cheney broke up with almost all of their Republican colleagues in the House and voted to impeach President Donald Trump, but in their home states the reaction is already growing. In Michigan, a challenger to Meijer received a boost when Steve Bannon promoted him on his podcast. In South Carolina, a local Republican is getting so many calls asking him to run against Rice that he can’t keep his phone charged. Subscribe to the New York Times newsletter The Morning. And in Wyoming, a state senator named Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, “out of touch” with his home state when he announced his campaign in the primaries against her. The 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment are already facing a fleet of primary opponents, censorship and other reproaches from Republican Party organizations in their hometown, an indication that the battle for Trump will play a decisive role in defining the party’s direction. over the next two years. “Trump may be gone, but Trumpism is practically guaranteed to be part of the 2022 elections,” said Ken Spain, a former senior official on the Congressional Republican National Committee. “The tectonic plates have changed within the GOP and now members are trying to figure out how to overcome the fault lines.” Impeachment votes are not only being framed as a test of loyalty to Trump, they are also being used to tie the holders of Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who for more than a decade has been the bug- central bogeyman in republican parliamentary campaigns, with results. While some top Republican officials in Washington, such as Senator Mitch McConnell, now the minority leader, have started trying to create some distance between the party and Trump, there is little evidence that Republican voters in the primaries are interested in a divorce. political. Almost all House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump have already been formally censored by local branches of the Republican Party, face the next censorship votes or have been publicly reprimanded by local party leaders. Efforts across the country to punish these legislators offer vivid illustrations of the divisions that separate a party that has been excluded from power. There are already several Republicans in South Carolina looking to challenge Rice, a conservative from a Trump-friendly district, whose vote for impeachment shocked her colleagues and drew a rebuke from the South Carolina Republican Party chair. “I am 100% sure that Tom Rice will be the first child, ”said Ken Richardson, president of the school board in Horry County, who is inclined to dispute Rice himself. He said he had to charge his phone three times a day to keep up with calls and text messages over and over asking him to join the race. “I don’t know what he was thinking. I’m sure he has his reasons for voting the way he voted, ”added Richardson. “If there ever was a Trump country, we live in the Trump country.” Another potential opponent of Rice, former Mayor Mark McBride of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said he believed Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election (he is not), and collected several hundred signatures in a petition calling for resignation. of Rice. “The president didn’t instigate that,” said McBride of the Capitol rebellion on January 6. “The idea that the impeachment trial would go to the Senate, Tom Rice created a basis for it to continue.” Tom Norton, a Michigan businessman and Army veteran who lost the 2020 primary to Meijer, said the congressman called him to warn him the day he voted for Trump’s impeachment. Norton immediately filed the paperwork to mount another campaign against Meijer in 2022. Norton said he believed Meijer made a mistake in blaming Trump for inciting the rebellion. “We have a lot of people with a lot of passion and we can’t control everyone,” he said, before exaggerating the pockets of unrest that occurred alongside last year’s peaceful protests for racial justice. “Blaming President Trump is the same as blaming Kamala Harris and Joe Biden for all the riots the antifa did last summer.” Representative John Katko of downtown New York, who was the first Republican legislator to support impeachment, is one of the few remaining Republicans who represents a Democratic-biased district. Some Republicans in his district were outraged by his vote. “‘Not very happy’ would be the most polite way to say it,” said Fred Beardsley, chairman of the Republican Committee for Oswego County. “We are very upset. I am terribly upset. “” I think Mr. Katko crossed the line, “he continued. “He cheated on us.” For Katko and Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, David Valadao of California and Fred Upton and Meijer of Michigan, all Republicans who voted for impeachment and come from states that are likely to lose seats in this year’s redistricting process, the shapes of the districts they can trying to represent in 2022 have not yet been determined. Democratic state lawmakers in New York and Illinois could lure Katko and Kinzinger into districts represented by acting Republican colleagues, potentially blocking the way for a Trumpian insurgent, while committees will determine district lines in California, Michigan and Ohio. Gene Koprowski, a conservative filmmaker who entered to run against Kinzinger, said he did it to start raising money, but that he is waiting for the Illinois legislature to redraw his district maps before formally starting a campaign. The challengers for Cheney, who represents Wyoming’s unique district, do not face the same calculation. Anthony Bouchard, a state senator, announced his campaign on Wednesday, when President Joe Biden was being installed. On Thursday night, he was a guest on TV Newsmax and on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program. “Liz Cheney’s longstanding opposition to President Trump and her most recent impeachment vote shows how far she is from Wyoming,” Bouchard said in his announcement. “Wyoming taxpayers need a voice in Congress that faces Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, and doesn’t cover them.” Many of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment have survived challenging disputes before. In California, Valadão won his 2016 race by 13 percentage points, while Hillary Clinton won her district by 16 points. He lost to a Democrat by less than 1,000 votes in 2018 before winning back the seat in November, although Biden won the district by 10 points. In fact, several of these Republicans have strong personal brands at home, which can complicate the efforts of potential major opponents. Gonzalez, for example, was a star on the Ohio State University football team. And at least some party leaders, shaken by the violence on Capitol Hill, say lawmakers who voted for impeachment should have freedom of action. “If he were here with us now, I would probably shake his hand and congratulate him on his belief,” said Jim Dicke, Republican national committee for Ohio, about Gonzalez. “There is a lot to criticize in the process, but if you are an elected official and are asked to vote, you can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or abstain. You are not allowed to say, ‘Wait, I don’t like the process’ ”. In New York, Katko has twice survived being targeted by Democrats who tried to expel him from a Democratic-biased district. “We can’t do our own way of ‘canceling culture’, whether it’s Liz Cheney or Katko,” said former deputy Peter King, a moderate Republican who represented a district of Long Island for 28 years before retiring last year. King suggested that Katko run for governor. “It would be foolish to go after John Katko,” he said. “He is one of the best we have. And if we can’t accept differences of opinion, then we are no different than the other guys. In fact, Republicans have long fought each other over perceived purity tests, and in recent years, the most powerful litmus test in the eyes of primary voters has focused on loyalty to Trump. “President Trump enjoys a high approval rating within the Republican Party and his supporters are loyal,” said Joel Mattila, Republican president of Clark County, Washington. His committee has already issued a warning to deputy Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican who voted for impeachment. “She is going to face a primary challenge, based on what I am hearing,” he said. “It seems that, as people are thinking about it and over time, the level of intensity is definitely increasing.” Spain, a former Republican campaign representative in the House, said it would be up to the corporate donors who normally support Republicans to provide financial support to the 10 who voted for Trump’s impeachment. Michael McAdams, director of communications for the NRCC, said the committee is not involved in primaries. This also applies to competitors in contested races. “I hope,” said Spain, “that members of the business community who uphold the principles and refuse to support Republicans who voted against certification of election results will focus their energy and resources on helping members who stood up in the name of the American democratic process. ”This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company