Michigan GOP Rep. Justin Amash picked up a new primary challenge from state Rep. Jim Lower days after he called Donald Trump’s behavior “impeachable,” and the incumbent’s old allies are in no hurry to rescue him.
The anti-tax Club for Growth spent $218,000 to support Amash in 2014 during his last serious primary campaign, but they declared Tuesday that the congressman was “absolutely wrong on the standard for impeachment.” The Club, which added, “In spite of his excellent voting record on economic issues, we completely disagree with him on this,” didn’t say if they’d oppose him in 2020, but it doesn’t sound like they’re likely to aid him again.
The Club isn’t alone in souring on Amash. The powerful DeVos family, whose membership includes Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, helped Amash in the crowded 2010 open seat race and contributed a total of $65,000 to him in his hour of need in 2014, but they announced Wednesday through a spokesman that they “have no plans” to give to him this time. They also claimed that they’d made this decision before Amash’s impeachment tweets. Even the nihilistic Freedom Caucus, which Amash co-founded, formally condemned him on Monday, though they didn’t expel him.
However, if Amash seems bothered by any of this, he’s not showing it. The congressman said Monday, the day after Trump and several other Republicans unleashed their vitriol against him, that he remains “very confident” in his position in Michigan’s 3rd District. He also said that his two primary foes, Lower and veteran Tom Norton, were “not serious.”
Indeed, it sounds like Amash is just as unconcerned about his 2020 re-election prospects in private as he is in public. The Daily Beast wrote Wednesday that a source close to Amash “said the lawmaker believes that most of the GOP voters in Grand Rapids, the largest city in his district, aren’t actually all that enthralled by Trump, and that any true primary threat to him wouldn’t be from a Trumpist conservative.”
That seems like a very naive reading of what GOP politics has become since Trump’s 2016 win. Yes, it’s always possible that Amash’s allies are right and that Republican voters in Michigan’s 3rd District, which moved from 53-46 Romney to 52-42 Trump, are, in the words of a former Amash communications director, “[N]ot very Trumpy.” However, that’s a very risky bet for Amash to be making in an era where other Republican politicians have seen their primary prospects dramatically skyrocket or collapse based on just a single Trump tweet.
Of course, it’s possible Amash won’t be seeking re-election. Back in March, the congressman didn’t rule out challenging Trump as a Libertarian, and he also didn’t shoot down the idea on Tuesday. However, Amash insisted to The Hill, “It’s not something I’ve thought about,” and added, “I don’t take things off the table like that, but it’s not something at the forefront of my considerations right now.”