Christian Smith
Fierce infighting among House Republican lawmakers threatens to drive several members out of office as Republicans advance in incumbent primary contests against the best advice from their own party’s leaders.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) became the latest Republican to support Rep. Bob Good’s (R-Va.) primary rival John McGuire, after Good endorsed Bacon’s main challenger Dan Frei last month. Several other Republican lawmakers and notable political groups also supported McGuire.
Meanwhile, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) has endorsed Brandon Herrera, who is challenging Rep. Tony Gonzales (R) in South Texas — underscoring how deep resentment is enveloping the party’s already slim majority.
While some member races are taking place in safe red districts, they are also spilling over into other corners like Gonzales’ seat, potentially putting those areas in play for Democrats this fall.
“If you come after me. I’m going to come back twice as hard — as hard as I can, and I think it should be a lesson,” Bacon told The Hill. “That’s not what we want to do. I think…it creates dysfunction. I feel like this is bad for Speaker Johnson, but there should be a consequence for bad behavior.”
House Republicans have been embroiled in feuds and fights since the early days of their Republican majority.
It all started with conservative resisters who forced 15 votes just days into the new Congress before finally electing the former congressman. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker of the House – a byproduct of the narrow Republican majority that has given defectors pronounced influence over their party.
The disputes became public, especially after a group of Republicans ousted McCarthy in October — capitalizing on some of the same negotiations they made with McCarthy to later remove him — leading to weeks of uncertainty about the path forward for the GOP in the House. , a treasure. of early retirements and even more headaches, even after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) won the gavel.
The infighting is now broadening into more personal territory as House Republicans advance in each other’s primaries despite Johnson’s efforts to quell the disputes.
Good — the head of the Freedom Caucus who drew the ire of Trump supporters after initially supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary before later endorsing Trump — told The Hill in a phone interview that members began raiding each other’s races after he saw a fellow House member holding a fundraiser for his opponent.
Outside groups such as the Republican Main Street Partnership, which has close ties to McCarthy, have also gotten involved.
Good accused McCarthy of being on a “revenge trip” against those who removed him from his position as speaker.
But Good bristled at criticism from other House GOP members, who accused him and others of being obstructionists, making it difficult to get things done at the conference. He argued that Republicans supporting McGuire passed legislation with Democrats that did not include “meaningful policy reforms,” in the reauthorization of the national defense spending law and the reauthorization of a warrant-free surveillance law.
“What were they prevented from doing? More things Democrats would agree on?” Well, he told The Hill. “Or are they pretending that they would do more conservative, Republican-type things if it weren’t for us, when they know the Senate wouldn’t approve them anyway? So what are we referring to?”
However, infighting among members extending into the primaries threatens to drive Republicans out of their seats — and potentially put some of them in play for Democrats this fall.
Gonzales is fighting for his political life against Herrera, a gun enthusiast and YouTuber, in a primary runoff later this month after failing to win at least half the vote during the initial March primaries.
Members like Good, Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) supported Herrera, while Johnson, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Republicans like Texas Reps. Ronny Jackson and Jake Ellzey threw their support behind weight behind Gonzales. Some Republicans have expressed concern that if Herrera wins this month’s special election, it could give Democrats an opening.
“I think the 23rd is the only district I would be very careful about,” Austin-based Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser explained of Gonzales’ 23rd Congressional District. “…The primaries are healthy and good, but this is the kind of district we could lose. So I think… it’s just a safer bet to go to districts that are safely red,” he added, referring to members’ involvement in other GOP primaries.
Herrera’s campaign rejected the idea that Democrats could pick up the seat if he won the special election, telling The Hill in a statement that “the suggestion that this seat is ‘at risk’ is an unfounded scare tactic spread by the campaign by Tony Gonzalez that depends on Republicans are bad at math and ignore recent history.”
The campaign argued that Gonzales was “based on lies” and that “Brandon Herrera will win this seat in November by a larger margin than Tony ever did.”
In other primaries, like the Bacon-Frei primary race in Nebraska’s swing 2nd Congressional District, some members of the Republican Party are less concerned about the possibility of Frei unseating an incumbent, but that doesn’t mean they’re excited about the races either.
“A standard conservative candidate might win in some districts… might win in the third. Nebraska’s Third District, easy,” said Omaha-based GOP consultant Philip Young. “But you can’t win in the second without going along to get along a little.”
Members also recognize that infighting does not help the party.
“There is no doubt that this hurts us. Dysfunction and division hurt the Republican Party,” Bacon told The Hill.
The infighting defies an unwritten rule — espoused by former President Ronald Reagan — that governed Republican politics for most of the last half-century: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. Reagan dubbed it the 11th Commandment.
The apparent defiance of that decree — and the potential damage it could have on the Republican Party’s chances in November — was not lost on Johnson, who went to great lengths to discourage his troops from attacking other incumbents in the primary elections. During the West Virginia Republicans’ annual conference in March, the House speaker said he “asked everyone to de-escalate the situation.”
“This is divisive for obvious reasons and we shouldn’t get involved in it,” he told CNN at the time. “So I’m telling everyone who’s doing this to stop it.”
The message, however, was ignored by several sitting members, who continued to participate in disputes against incumbent colleagues in districts across the country. In addition to Texas, Nebraska, and Virginia, these fights have also emerged in South Carolina, where members of the far-right Freedom Caucus are actively campaigning against Republican Rep. William Timmons, and in Illinois, where radicals like Gaetz have unsuccessfully tried to oust the moderate deputy. .
“I think they’re fed up with do-nothing Republicans who have a terrible record, and when they see a strong conservative fighter who gets results, they get excited about it and want to support our candidacy,” explained South Carolina State. Rep. Adam Morgan (R), who will challenge Timmons next month and has the support of people like Gaetz and Rep. Ralph Norman (RS.C.).
Frei, who was endorsed by Good, argued that “…the important issues that [constituents are] talking about are not the issues that people like Don Bacon and [Mike] Flood and [Adam] Smith are addressing.”
In fact, Democrats have their own ideological divisions, which has led to cases in which members have supported primary candidates rather than incumbent lawmakers — much to the frustration of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) and its leadership team, who are gone. out of his way to defend the starters.
But such cases are few and far between, and the tone has not been nearly as hostile and aggressive as the public bafflement of some Republican lawmakers toward their own Republican colleagues.
The internal tensions reflect the deep fissures in the Republican Party in the era of Donald Trump, whose arrival on the political scene in 2015 divided the Republican Party into factions that often pitted “America First” Trump loyalists against Reagan-style institutionalists in a tight contest. battle to decide the future direction of the party.
This conflict manifested itself in McCarthy’s removal; appeared in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) recent effort to unseat Johnson; and it is emerging again on the campaign trail as the Speaker of the House struggles – unsuccessfully – to discourage lawmakers from intervening in primary elections.
Some members appear to leave the door open to supporting other primary challengers to the incumbents.
Asked if there were other primaries that Good was considering getting involved in, Good responded, “Well, if there are, they will be public and that information will be announced obviously.”
But the Virginia firebrand does not portend electoral consequences for Republicans in the fall, amid member primary contests.
“If Derrick Evans wins West Virginia, if Adam Morgan wins South Carolina, if Brandon Herrera wins Texas and Dan Frei wins Nebraska, and [Jarrod] If Sessler wins Washington, I think we’ll win all those seats in the general election, too.”
Updated at 6:43 am
Mychael Schnell contributed.
