Will the Michigan congressman go the way of Tom Rice — or Nancy Mace?
Will the Michigan congressman go the way of Tom Rice — or Nancy Mace?
T he power of former president Donald Trump’s endorsement is being put to the test — again. So far, this exercise has returned mixed results. Last week, South Carolina’s primary saw the Trump-endorsed Russell Fry defeat incumbent Tom Rice, while Katie Arrington, another Trump endorsee, lost to incumbent Nancy Mace. In Ohio, the former president’s endorsement may have won the Senate primary race for J. D. Vance, but it had little effect in Georgia.
In Michigan’s third congressional district, voters will once again decide if Trump’s endorsement will influence Republican politics. The state’s primary on August 2 will determine if Representative Peter Meijer goes on to face Hillary Scholten, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, in the fall. The freshman congressman’s challenger, John Gibbs, has received considerable support from Trump, including a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. The mixed results of the Trump-involved races to date leave unclear what the magic sauce is for overcoming his influence. Meijer claimed in an interview with National Review, however, that the key to beating Gibbs will simply be to run on policy.
“I’m not running on a campaign of ‘Why My Opponent Is Awful,’” said Meijer, who was elected in 2020. “I’m running a campaign based on what we have done, what we have demonstrated, and what we hope to continue to do.”
Meijer’s prospects look grim, according to a February poll. Likely voters surveyed preferred any other Republican to Meijer by more than 40 points, and, though he beat Gibbs when voters were given only the two candidates names, the lead disappeared when pollsters informed voters of Meijer’s impeachment vote and Trump’s endorsement of Gibbs. At the same time, even with the fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, Meijer raised more than four times as much money as Gibbs in the first quarter of 2022. In the bank, he has over $1 million more in funds than Gibbs does.
Gibbs has made his support for and endorsement from Trump a centerpiece of his primary challenge. One of the yard signs paid for by his campaign displays “Trump Endorsed” at the top. When voters visit his campaign website, they immediately see a picture of Gibbs with Trump and another picture of him speaking at the former president’s April 2 “Save America” rally in Michigan, where Gibbs called Meijer a “RINO” for voting to impeach Trump after the January 6 riot.
“I’m not a backstabber,” Gibbs, who worked in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the previous administration, told NR in an interview. Trump, he said, “was the overwhelming leader of our party, and loved by almost everyone who voted for Peter Meijer, but he went and stabbed his voters in the back by voting to impeach Trump.”
Meijer has worked to make his policy prescriptions, rather than his impeachment vote, a focal point of the campaign. In his most recent campaign ad Meijer, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, lists the struggles that America is facing, among them inflation, government spending, and border crossings. He promises to leave “headlines and soundbites” to other politicians and to “hold the Biden administration accountable for hurting Michigan families.”
“When it comes to personality politics, it’s fantastic fodder for getting airtime in the culture war on cable news,” Meijer said, “but it doesn’t have any impact on the price of gasoline. It doesn’t have an impact on the employment rate. It doesn’t have an impact on ensuring that our economy is strong and that we are respected on the global stage.”
While he voted to impeach Trump last January, he did not call for a total rejection of what he brought to the Republican Party.
“This is where I’m gonna make a lot of folks who might like me angry, because I am more than happy to talk about the positive steps in the way that Donald Trump brought energy to the Republican Party and the soundness of a lot of his policies that, frustratingly, Joe Biden has sought to reverse,” he said.
The problem with Trump, according to Meijer, was that the energy “has not always been channeled in a positive direction” and, since the November election, “has been almost entirely focused on attacking other Republicans.”
Outside of Trump’s attacks on Republicans, one element that may make the district’s race rather fraught is Democrats’ spending money to promote “Stop the Steal” candidates, either because they think the Trumpy candidates will be easier to beat or because they want to make non-Trumpy candidates spend more in the primary to weaken them in the general. In Pennsylvania, Democrats spent twice as much money on pro-Doug Mastriano TV ads as did the Mastriano campaign itself. The party in Colorado looks to be using the same strategy.
In California, Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC ran ads to promote Chris Mathys, who calls himself a “Trump Conservative,” against incumbent David Valadao, who also voted to impeach Trump. Officials are still counting ballots from that June 7 primary, but current results show Valadao ahead of Mathys by just under four points. While there have not been considerable Democratic campaigns for Gibbs yet, Meijer foresees it happening closer to the primary.
“If other races are any example, they’ll wait until the last minute,” he said, “until it’s too late to counter. But I will say there’s something pretty rich about Nancy Pelosi one day saying January 6 is the greatest threat to our democracy and must be investigated, and, at the exact same time, she’s greenlighting her super PAC to criticize Republicans who voted for impeachment and elevate their extreme primary challengers.”
While Gibbs said he has “no idea” whether Democrats will undertake such a campaign, he is confident that “we will win, no matter what they do or do not do.” One of the reasons for his confidence is his personal interactions with voters.
“People are very excited, very happy to learn about me, and they’re very happy that someone is running against Peter Meijer,” he said.
Another element that could impact the race is Michigan’s redistricting. Because the state lost a House seat from the results of the 2020 census, Meijer’s district looks different from when he was first elected. Two years ago, Meijer beat Scholten by six points, and the district was R+9, according to FiveThirtyEight. This year, the seat is projected to be D+3, making the general election more competitive.
Although the new district has more Democrats than it did previously, Gibbs believes it still contains a clear Republican path to victory.
“I think you’ll see many independents and even some Democrats decide to choose based on results and not vote Democrat,” he said. “I think that whether you look at the general or the primary, it looks good. I think it’s very favorable.”
Meijer described the new district as half old and half new, which means he has not been interacting on a regular basis with a large number of the voters he will have to win over. Still, he claimed to be confident that he could pick up their votes.
“Our goal was to be a workhorse and not a show horse,” he said, “and I think we have an incredibly strong legislative track record to back that up.”