President Trump wasn’t about to lose in the Fourth District
Ed Gallrein thanked his campaign staff and his family on during his victory speech in Covington, Kentucky. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)
Ed Gallrein, Republican nominee for Congress in the Fourth District, began his victory speech Tuesday night by thanking President Trump. That was certainly appropriate, and arguably required, since Trump picked Gallrein to defeat seven-term Rep. Thomas Massie in what became the most expensive primary election ever held for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Most of the $33 million in advertising attacked Massie, who was clearly Trump’s main target in what national news media dubbed his “revenge tour” against Republicans who refused to bend to his will – or who directly confronted him, as Massie did by co-sponsoring the bipartisan law calling for release of the investigative files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The tour has been largely successful, even as Trump’s national poll ratings have reached new lows and he remains flummoxed by Iran. He extended the tour Tuesday by endorsing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against Sen. John Cornyn in next week’s runoff in Texas. That’s a bigger race with wider implications than the Massie-Gallrein contest, but Trump clearly cared more about the latter. He made that plain in his Truth Social posts, an appearance for Gallrein in the district, and the White House’s apparent management of Gallrein’s campaign. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even got into the act, taking time out from overseeing the war and the armed services to campaign Monday for Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL.
Trump hates to lose, and he wasn’t about to lose this one. He and Gallrein won big, by almost 10 percentage points.
The race was a test of strength for Trump, and also for the American Israel Political Action Committee and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which collectively spent over $9 million against Massie, who is no friend of Israel. Massie couldn’t resist a parting shot, beginning his not-such-a-concession speech by saying “It took while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv,” and later mentioning big political donor Miriam Adelson, who is Jewish and presumably provided some of the money for the attacks on him.
On a higher plane, Massie said “There is a yearning in this country for someone who will vote for principle over party.” But there wasn’t enough of a yearning among Republicans in the Fourth District, and Massie had created problems for himself over the years by not keeping his fences mended with local GOP leaders. Still, it took a Trump rub-out operation to dislodge a man whose flinty libertarianism and deficit hawkishness made him a national folk hero.
Barr’s big win
In the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, nominee Andy Barr didn’t thank Trump until well into his victory speech. That, too, was appropriate. Barr was already headed for victory when Trump endorsed him and got Trump-connected candidate Nate Morris out of the race on May 1, and he beat the underfunded Daniel Cameron, a former state attorney general, by 30 points.
The Democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by Mitch McConnell was won by former state Rep. Charles Booker, who was the nominee against Sen. Rand Paul in 2022 after giving Amy McGrath a scare in the 2020 primary. In their rematch this week, Booker defeated McGrath by 11 points in a seven-way race even though he didn’t mount a TV campaign.
That was testimony to the statewide following Booker has developed among Democrats in his three races, and to their unwillingness to give McGrath another chance after her spectacular failure as the nominee against McConnell in 2020. Booker gave a heartfelt victory speech, saying “This was nothing but people power,” but it will take a lot more than that for such a liberal to defeat Barr in a conservative state that has turned Republican and not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992.
Some hope for Democrats?
Democrats’ best prospects in Kentucky this fall are in the Sixth Congressional District, where the nominees for Barr’s open seat are former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, who beat state Rep. Ryan Dotson by 30 points, and Democrat Zach Dembo, who ran 8 points ahead of former state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson in a seven-way contest.
Dembo, making his first race, has a compelling and timely story to tell: He was a Justice Department lawyer who resigned when Trump started using the department to go after his enemies. He told that story over and over in different ways, in well-done ads financed partly through fundraising by Democratic activist Christy Brown of Louisville. Alvarado is favored, but if Trump remains on the skids, Dembo could win.
Stevenson’s supporters included Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, who’s running for governor next year. The ultimate favorite in that race is First District Rep. James Comer, a Republican who almost won the GOP nomination in 2015 and acknowledged a few days before Tuesday’s primary that he plans to run. Kentucky’s political seasons often overlap.
This column was published first in the Northern Kentucky Tribune, which makes it available to other publications with appropriate credit.