It wasn’t quite a clean sweep, but former President Trump is probably in a very good mood as he surveys this morning’s primaries results.
Rep. Tom Rice, who voted to impeach Trump, was ousted in South Carolina by Trump-endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry — the first of those 10 rebels to face a Trump-backed challenger in a primary and lose.
Though some House Republicans who voted in favor of a bipartisan investigation of Jan. 6 survived last week’s primaries Rice, who never backed down on his opposition to Trump, endured hate mail and death threats in the months prior to his brutal loss.
As Politico observes, other GOP-ers who dared to impeach Trump, like Reps. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), David Valadao (R-Calif.) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) had the cushion of more moderate districts, and Herrera Beutler and Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) are both bolstered by all-party primaries. It’s worth mentioning that Rice was a staunch supporter of Trump before the insurrection on January 6, yet his attempts to back his change of position on the campaign trail clearly failed.
“In the wee hours of that disgraceful night, while waiting for the Capitol of our great country to be secured, I knew I should vote to certify,” Rice said in December. “But because I had made a public announcement of my intent to object, I did not want to go back on my word. So, yeah, I regret my vote to object.”
Trump critic Rep. Nancy Mace just scraped a victory against her Trump-endorsed rival former state Rep. Katie Arrington in a district south of Rice’s — her narrow win a testament to the difficulty of negotiating a party still dominated by the former President.
Trump himself responded to the result with uncharacteristic (if relative) grace, posting on his social media platform Truth Social that Arrington was “a long shot” who “ran a great race and way over performed,” adding, “Congrats to Nancy Mace, who should easily be able to defeat her Democrat opponent!”
On Rice’s defeat, he wrote: “The biggest News of the evening so far is that Russell Fry beat Impeach Master Tom Rice with a Vote of more than 51%, therefore WINNING OUTRIGHT with no need for a run-off.”
Things were looking up for Trump elsewhere as well, as ally Adam Laxalt prevailed in Nevada. The former attorney general will now face Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in what looks set to be a hotly-contested November election. Laxalt, who’s enjoyed the support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as well as the former president, has repeated election fraud lies consistently — and per the New York Times, was ready to make fraud claims in his own race many months before the vote itself.
Latino voters in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley displayed a distinct drift towards the GOP as Democrat Dan Sanchez’s conceded to Republican Mayra Flores in a special election for a House seat. As CNN notes, if battleground states like Arizona and Nevada can mirror this pattern come fall, it would mark a seismic shift on the nation’s political map.
