Donald Trump scored a political win in eastern Kentucky on Tuesday, with his chosen candidate vanquishing Rep. Thomas Massie, a fiscal hawk with a libertarian streak who has publicly sparred with the president on spending bills, the war in Iran and the release of records related to the convicted late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein was leading Massie 54 percent to 46 percent just before 8 p.m. Eastern time, when The Associated Press called the Republican primary for Kentucky’s 4th District.
The bitterly fought contest drew an influx of outside spending, much of it from pro-Israel groups targeting Massie. With nearly $33 million spent on ads and other campaign-related costs, the primary was among the costliest in recent years, according to The New York Times.
Kentucky Republicans also selected Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Barr as the party’s nominee in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader who also tangled with Trump on occasion. Barr handily defeated former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, according to the AP. And Trump’s pick to fill the House seat Barr is vacating — physician and former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado — also won Tuesday night.
Victories by Trump’s favored candidates — and losses by those he deemed disloyal — demonstrate the hold he has on the GOP, despite sliding poll numbers nationally. Massie’s loss comes days after Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy lost a high-profile Republican primary after drawing Trump’s ire over his vote to convict him at his 2021 impeachment trial. And earlier this month, several GOP state senators in Indiana lost their primaries to Trump-backed foes after voting to reject a congressional redistricting plan supported by the president.
A farmer with a pair of engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massie was first elected to Congress in 2012 and had grown accustomed to winning his deep-red seat by comfortable margins in the years since.
He has been ideologically in sync with many Republican core policies, including opposing abortion access and gun control. But he cast himself as a principled conservative, incurring Trump’s wrath last year for opposing the president’s sweeping tax and spending legislation, also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” In fact, he reveled in his role as a maverick, embracing the #SassyWithMassie hashtag, while painting Gallrein as a closet liberal who embraced “woke” ideology.
Massie’s fight for political survival drew national attention and became a test of Trump’s political strength. On the eve of the election, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to the district to stump for Gallrein.
On Tuesday, shortly after the results came in, the White House appeared to gloat over Massie’s defeat. “Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power,’’ White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted on social media. “F— around, find out.”
Gallrein, 67, has never served in elective office before. He ran for the state Senate in 2024 but narrowly lost a three-way Republican primary. He served in the Navy for 30 years, rising to the rank of captain and deploying to Panama, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan before returning to the family farm.
He will be heavily favored in the November general election in a deep-red district that Trump carried by 36 points in 2024, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.
This report has been updated to reflect the correct year Ed Gallrein ran for the Kentucky state Senate.
