Peter Meijer

Trump-backed challenger wins after Democrats spend to boost him – one of many election deniers to win key primary contests.

But over the course of the midterms, Democrats seem to have forgotten just where those limits lie.” They led Trump-backed challengers but as Washington state conducts elections by mail, full results were not known. In the Arizona legislature, the House speaker, Rusty Bowers, who testified at a January 6 hearing about Trump’s pressure to overturn the 2020 election, lost his primary for a state senate seat to a Trump-backed candidate, David Farnsworth. In the race for Arizona secretary of state, a post that overseees the conduct of elections, Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker who worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat in Arizona, won his primary. David Valadao of California has survived. Meijer is the second of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment to lose his seat, after Tom Rice of South Carolina, beaten by a Trump-backed challenger in June.

In Michigan, primary voters rejected the young conservative who voted to impeach Trump, while two other Republicans who did so fought for political survival ...

Mr. Kent has campaigned as a “Stop the Steal”-style candidate and suggested baselessly that an otherwise peaceful crowd on Jan. 6 was infiltrated by so-called deep state agents. Both she and Mr. Newhouse were running in crowded open primaries. Instead, they have been the ones to be marginalized and expelled from the G.O.P. ranks in Congress, as primary voters favor those who have adopted Mr. Trump’s playbook of attacks fueled by cultural grievances and conspiracy theories. The result is that the already thin ranks of moderate and mainstream conservative Republicans in the House are likely to be even thinner next year, with brash, Trump-styled candidates replacing them. Mr. Gibbs’s nomination will create an uphill battle for Republicans’ attempts to hold the seat. And Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has become Mr. Trump’s chief antagonist and most vocal critic in Congress as the vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault, is trailing her Trump-endorsed primary opponent significantly in public polls. The contrast between the two candidates could hardly have been starker. But it was ultimately not enough to overcome Mr. Gibbs’s challenge. He earned the former president’s backing after Mr. Meijer supported impeaching Mr. Trump for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, calling him “unfit for office.” Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina was defeated in June by a Trump-endorsed primary challenger who called Mr. Rice’s support of impeachment a betrayal. Mr. Meijer’s premonition proved correct. His defeat underscored the continuing appetite among right-wing voters who form the party’s base to force out those who defied the former president.

Meijer slammed Republicans who promoted Trump's false election fraud claims, but his opponent—a former Trump Administration official—fully embraced them.

Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) was walloped in the GOP primary for South Carolina's 7th Congressional District, losing to Trump-backed challenger Russell Fry by more than 26 percentage points. Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) survived his race in California's jungle primary, but finished a distant second to Democrat Rudy Salas and appears all but certain to lose to Salas in the general election. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump over the January 6 Capitol riot, leading to the former president mounting a relentless campaign to force the representatives out of office.

Rep. Peter Meijer was one of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year.

“[Y]ou would think that the Democrats would look at John Gibbs and see the embodiment of what they say they most fear. “This was a hard-fought primary campaign and I want to thank everyone in west Michigan for their support. Meijer on Monday called out the House Democrats’ campaign organization for what he called a “naked political gambit” by heavily donating to Gibbs in a transparent attempt to elevate the “weaker Republican candidate ahead of the November midterm elections.”

Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer has lost to a primary challenger backed by former President Donald Trump.

In Arizona, a leading figure in the QAnon conspiracy movement was badly trailing in his Republican primary. The three races were the biggest test yet for GOP incumbents who broke with Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep him in power on Jan. 6, 2021. The primaries for the other two House Republicans who voted for impeachment, Washington state Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, were too early to call Wednesday morning. And so far, only California Rep. David Valadao has survived — just barely. Trump has vowed revenge against the 10 House Republicans who crossed party lines for the impeachment vote, and he endorsed GOP challengers to them in the midterm elections. “A Constitutional Republic like ours requires leaders who are willing to take on the big challenges, to find common ground when possible, and to put their love of country before partisan advantage,” Meijer said in a statement before The Associated Press called the race for his challenger, John Gibbs. “Though this was not the outcome we hoped for, I will continue to do everything possible to move the Republican Party, West Michigan, and our country in a positive direction.”

Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year, was defeated in Tuesday's Republican primary.

“These destructive primary tactics aim to elevate Republican candidates who Democrats hope they can more easily beat in November,” several former Democratic members of Congress said in a joint statement this week. “But that toughness is bound by certain moral limits: Those who participated in the attack on the Capitol, for example, clearly fall outside those limits. “The Democrats are justifying this political jiu-jitsu by making the argument that politics is a tough business.

Getty. Former Trump official John Gibbs successfully defeated Rep. Peter Meijer on Tuesday night, putting an end to the freshman lawmaker's brief stint ...

At the time, Gibbs attributed the tweets to his role as a commentator, “that is behind me, that is not my current role.” Though this was not the outcome we hoped for, I will continue to do everything possible to move the Republican Party, West Michigan, and our country in a positive direction.” Gibbs, who worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration, made the idea that the election was stolen from Trump the cornerstone of his campaign and even indicated he may not accept the results of his own race if he was not successful.

Rep. Peter Meijer was a free-thinking Republican who saw Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. Democrats just helped boot him out of office.

Tuesday's results ensure that there won't be a third, thanks to both halves of the two-party system. The January 6 riot should have been a warning to both parties about the potentially dangerous mixture of rage and conspiratorial thinking that increasingly dominates right-wing politics. (In Pennsylvania, elections are overseen by the secretary of state, a position appointed by the governor). It isn't a victory for my party, and it isn't the victory the Democrats might think it is. Rep. David Valadao (R–Calif.) is the only member of the group to survive a primary so far. "Politics is a dirty game, and both parties routinely engage in this sort of brinkmanship, doing whatever it takes to win more seats," Soave wrote.

Both candidates say they have a shot at winning Meijer's supporters following his defeat in the Republican primary for Michigan's 3rd Congressional ...

We’re going to keep making the rounds in the district and letting people know who I am and letting people know what’s at stake this November.” “This was a hard-fought race, decided by less than 4,000 votes out of more than 100,000 cast,” Meijer said. I take that as a pretty good sign about where people are going.” “We’re making phone calls. — or do you want someone that’s going to be on the conservative side of things that has actual solutions that work for everybody.” Meijer, who was defeated by Gibbs 51.9% to 48.1%, introduced his former rival.

John Gibbs, a little-known candidate who had entered the race for the newly drawn 3rd Congressional District in west Michigan but who was backed by the former ...

Going into the fall election, Gibbs will face Democrat Hillary Scholten, a Grand Rapids lawyer who was unopposed in that party's primary and who is a former Obama-era Justice Department attorney who ran against Meijer in 2020, losing by 6 percentage points. In the interim, the 3rd Congressional District has since been redrawn and is now considered more Democratic leaning, which could benefit Scholten, especially against the lesser-known — and more Trump-aligned — Republican nominee. In his concession, Meijer said: "This was a hard-fought primary campaign and I want to thank everyone in west Michigan for their support. "I don't know what they're doing or not doing, it really doesn't matter to me," Gibbs said. ... I also want to congratulate my opponent, John Gibbs, on his victory tonight." Trump targeted Meijer — who is in his first term and is a member of the wealthy family that owns and operates the eponymous grocery store chain bearing his last name — for voting to impeach the former president for his role in instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — becoming one of only 10 Republicans to do so.