Rep. Peter Meijer became the second of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump to be ousted in a primary Tuesday, losing to Trump-endorsed conservative challenger John Gibbs in the GOP primary for his seat in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, CNN projects.
Meijer, a freshman, voted to impeach the then-President just days after taking office, after the insurrection at the US Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021. Gibbs, meanwhile, backed Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Meijer’s loss means the Grand Rapids-based 3rd District seat will be one of the most competitive House contests in November’s midterm elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, eyeing the seat as a possible pick-up opportunity, spent more than $300,000 on television ads seeking to bolster Gibbs with pro-Trump GOP primary voters by portraying him as a Trump-aligned conservative.
Meijer, at his election night event at a bar in Grand Rapids, said he’d heard from House Democratic colleagues who were angry about the “hypocrisy that that represented.”
“Obviously the DCCC dropping a half-million dollar ad buy to prop up my primary challenger with seven days to go is not something we liked to see,” he said.
Source: www.cnn.com