Army veteran Peter Meijer, who is a member of a prominent billionaire family, announced Wednesday that he would challenge Michigan Rep. Justin Amash in the GOP primary for the 3rd District. Meijer joins three other Republicans in the contest to try and deny Amash, who has called for Donald Trump to be impeached, renomination in this Grand Rapids-area seat. It only takes a plurality to win a primary in the Wolverine State, so this crowded field may end up helping the incumbent by splitting the anti-Amash vote.
Meijer's family owns an eponymous retail chain with almost 200 locations in the Midwest, and his father serves as its executive chairman. Meijer says that he has never had a role with the company other than stocking shelves as a teenager, though. Instead, Meijer served in the Army and deployed to Iraq. He later worked for veterans advocacy groups and on behalf of refugees in South Sudan.
While some of Amash’s other primary foes, most notably state Rep. Jim Lower, are running as proud Trump allies, Meijer didn’t even mention Trump or Amash in his campaign kickoff. Instead, Meijer argued he was running “because our politicians spend their time trashing each other online, coming up with excuses and pointing fingers. We should expect more from people who represent us.”
That’s not a message we hear from many Republicans in the Trump era, where most conservatives seem quite delighted to have a politician who spends his time trashing other people online. Meijer’s team did say that their candidate “definitely doesn't agree with Amash's push for impeachment,” though that’s also hardly a vigorous anti-Amash or pro-Trump message.
While much of the focus of this primary will be on Amash’s calls for impeachment, Meijer’s other primary opponents may also be able to score some points by also portraying him as anti-Trump. In 2016, Meijer donated $250 to a group called Common Defense/Beyond the Choir Action Fund, a group started by veterans who said they believed Trump was a “real threat.” This month, Meijer said he’d made this contribution because the organization said they were “defending veterans,” and he argued, “They lied to me. I never gave them another penny after agenda became clear.”
While Meijer hasn’t run for office before, he’s not new to politics. Last cycle he joined the advisory group of With Honor Fund, a super PAC that spent $10 million on independent expenditures to aid veterans from both parties; Meijer says he’s since left the board. Meijer’s time at With Honor could help him make some useful political contacts, but his ties to the group could also open him up to more attacks in the primary: While With Honor aided Republicans in primaries and several competitive general elections, they also spent serious money on behalf of several Democrats who flipped GOP-held House seats last year.
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