The most expensive primary election in US history is underway in Kentucky, as President Donald Trump and the Israel lobby try to unseat Representative Thomas Massie, a hardline conservative who broke with the president over Israel, Iran, and Epstein.
Pro-Israel groups have pumped more than $10 million into Tuesday’s primary, which pits Massie against Ed Gallrein, a military veteran who ran an unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2024.
The election is a flashpoint in a wider battle being waged on the American right, with an ever more neoconservative Trump embracing the Bush-era interventionism of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senator Lindsey Graham, and publicly denouncing former ‘America First’ allies such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson.
Massie is firmly in the latter camp. In his 14 years in Congress, Massie has opposed every gun control measure that has come before the House of Representatives, pushed to abolish the Department of Education, and voted to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. On foreign policy, he has backed the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East, voted against multiple military aid packages for Ukraine, and in October 2023 was the only Republican to vote against a resolution guaranteeing American support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Why does Trump want Massie out?
Trump endorsed Massie in the 2022 Republican primary, calling him a “conservative warrior” and a “first-rate defender of the Constitution.” However, the two had an uneasy relationship, with Trump branding Massie a “third rate Grandstander” and suggesting he be thrown out of the GOP for opposing the president’s $2 trillion Covid-19 bailout bill in 2020.
The relationship worsened during Trump’s second term. After Massie opposed Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ spending package last year, Trump described the Kentuckian as a “negative force who almost always Votes ‘NO’,” and promised that “we will have a wonderful American Patriot running against him in the Republican Primary.”
Massie’s opposition to Trump’s war on Iran and his insistence that Trump release the full, unredacted Epstein files further angered the president. At a rally in March, Trump gave Gallrein his “complete and total endorsement,” describing him as a “true American hero.”
Ed who?
Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein is illustrative of the president’s recent embrace of the ‘Never Trump’ neocons who despised him a decade ago. Gallrein left the Republican Party after Trump secured the presidential nomination in 2016, vowing not to rejoin the GOP until the party was rid of him. Now, with Trump cozying up to the interventionists, Gallrein is once again content to associate himself with the president.
Gallrein is a relatively unknown figure. His campaign website lists a series of generic Republican policy priorities – “unleash our economy,” “secure the border once and for all,” “end the woke agenda” – and Trump seems to have chosen him not on any specific virtues, but because he is anyone but Thomas Massie. At the endorsement rally in March, Trump devoted more time to attacking Massie than promoting any of Gallrein’s policies, telling the crowd “he’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.”
How is Israel involved?
Massie’s persistent criticism of Israel has made him a target of wealthy pro-Israeli donors, who have spent more than $9 million bankrolling Gallrein’s campaign. According to Massie, more than 95% of Gallrein’s donations have come from pro-Israel lobbyists and interest groups. Beyond direct donations to Gallrein, these megadonors have spent a total of $15.5 million on the primary, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pitching in more than $4.1 million, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s ‘RJC Victory Fund’ spending $3.9 million, and MAGA KY – a super PAC funded by pro-Israel philanthropists Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson – spending $7.9 million, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
“Their position is more war, it’s more strife, it’s more bombs, it’s more foreign aid, and those are the things that I’ve been voting against,” Massie told Tucker Carlson earlier this month. “So the real reason that this race is a serious race, and I may lose, is because a foreign lobby has fully funded, to the extent that they’ve never done in any Republican race ever before, my opponent.”
Massie has accused AIPAC of controlling Congress, telling Carlson in 2024 that every US lawmaker “has an AIPAC person… like a babysitter” who works to ensure that they vote in line with Israel’s interests. He has since voted against military aid to Israel, boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, and introduced legislation that would force AIPAC to register as a foreign agent.
AIPAC and Gallrein’s other megadonors have made no secret of their work to oust Massie. “He’s the most anti-Israel Republican in the House,” a spokesman for the group’s ‘United Democracy Project’ PAC told Politico. “This is a competitive, close primary situation. It’s always hard to defeat incumbents… But we think there’s an opportunity here.”
Who will win?
Massie has easily defeated every primary challenger in his 14-year career in Congress. However, he has never faced such a concerted campaign against him, and almost all recent polls show him neck and neck with Gallrein. A Big Data Poll survey published on Monday showed a dead heat between the two candidates, while a Quantus Insights poll published last week put Gallrein in the lead by five points.
Polls close at 6 PM local time in Kentucky. When the results come in, two key questions will be answered: Are Republican voters more loyal to Trump or ‘America First’ principles? And can the Israel lobby buy whatever congressional seats it wants?