The primary in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, between Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ed Gallrein, his Trump-backed challenger, is not the test of President Donald Trump’s sway over Republicans some are billing it as. While a Gallrein victory would serve as proof of the president’s influence over the GOP and its voters, a victory for Massie might not be the generalizable sign of MAGA’s crackup that Trump’s opponents are hoping for.
On May 19, voters in Kentucky’s 4th District will choose between two conservative Republicans, Massie and Gallrein, who are, on the surface, not all that different. Both are supporters of the president, and both agree with the vast majority of the president’s agenda. The key difference between them is the president’s personal disposition towards them. Massie has been a thorn in Trump’s side for much of his second term, first over the release of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and more recently over his criticism of the president’s decision to join Israel and launch a new war against Iran.
The fight has escalated into becoming the most expensive House primary race in U.S. history, with national Trump-aligned groups dropping millions against Massie, who himself has been a distinguished fundraiser, spending some $5.6 million of his own campaign money on ads, with Massie-aligned committees spending roughly $5.5 million. Using bizarre AI videos in some cases, the campaign ads have largely featured the candidates attempting to one-up each other, proving their conservative bona fides, while questioning the other’s authenticity.
At the core of the race, however, is the question of whether Trump gets voters to abandon their longtime congressman in favor of his hand-picked challenger. Notably, by backing a challenge to Massie, Trump is also highlighting two of his major 2024 campaign promises: releasing the Epstein files and not starting new wars abroad.
Massie has framed his campaign as representing the half of MAGA still married to some of the ideology behind Trump’s 2024 win, while Trump has instead carried the support of his MAGA loyalists and insisted that MAGA is whatever he says it is.
“MAGA is split right now,” Massie told Bloomberg News. “I have half of MAGA, and I think the president has the other half — not that I’m running against him.”
“The 4th District is very much its own animal and the brand of Republican politics that has a much wider lane in that district that’s not the same as in other parts of Kentucky.”
The breakdown, however, isn’t quite half and half, at least at the national level. According to recent AP polling, 9 in 10 self-identified MAGA Republicans support the president. The survey, however, wasn’t about the race in Kentucky, and didn’t ask about Massie.
The primary race is asymmetrical because of the idiosyncrasies of Massie and the district he represents, according to T.J. Litafik, a seasoned Kentucky political strategist, which he characterized as the heart of Massie’s specific brand of conservative politics.
“That part of Kentucky, particularly Kenton and Campbell County in the greater Cincinnati area, is sort of the heart of Thomas Massie’s brand of politics, the liberty movement, and he has close affiliates who have been able to defeat more establishment-aligned candidates in Republican primaries for quite a few state House and state Senate seats, and even some local government seats up there,” Litafik told Salon in an interview.
Litafik explained that because of Massie’s loyal following, he expects a low turnout on the 19th to be a good sign for Massie, whereas a higher turnout would indicate that Trump has influenced more infrequent voters to turn out in favor of Gallrein.
In addition to Kenton and Campbell counties, Litafik said he’ll be watching Lewis County, where Massie lives, and Boone and Shelby Counties as key parts of the district. Litafik explained that in this district, Republicans tend to lean more towards Massie’s ideology, at least when compared with those statewide. The decisive demographic, Litafik said, will be “Fox News” voters 65 years old and older who Litafik expects to break for Gallrein. If they show up in droves, Litafik said, that probably means that Massie is more likely to lose. He added that most Republicans aligned with retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a dominant force in Kentucky politics, are likely going to support Gallrein.
It’s this distinction between “liberty movement” Republicans and mainstream Republicans that serves as a confounding variable in interpreting the race as a referendum on Trump’s influence on the party in Litafik’s analysis. The district, in Litafik’s view, is distinct enough from Kentucky as a whole, let alone the entire country, that a loss for Gallrein shouldn’t be read as a repudiation of Trump’s brand of politics, whereas a victory for Gallrein is even more of an affirmation of Trump’s hold on the party than it would be in another district.
“The 4th District is very much its own animal and the brand of Republican politics that has a much wider lane in that district that’s not the same as in other parts of Kentucky,” Litafik explained. “A Thomas Massie-style Republican would not be successful in other parts of Kentucky, where they have a less libertarian leaning and more populist leaning sentiment.”
Mark Meckler, a conservative political activist and the president of the Convention of States, a conservative group that grew out of the Tea Party movement and calls for a convention to amend the Constitution, told Salon that he expects the election to measure whether there is any solid constituency in the GOP that will support someone who has invoked Trump’s ire. As recently as 2024, Massie won his Republican primary with more than 75% support, and a loss, or even a narrow victory for Massie, would indicate that there simply might not be a significant constituency for any Republican that breaks with Trump on any issue.
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“This is the first time that I’m aware of where he’s gone against a seated Republican incumbent, and doing it with an obviously serious war chest. So I think the first thing is, what’s Trump’s ceiling against a fortified incumbent?” Meckler said. “The follow-on to that is, you’re looking at probably over 10 million spent against Massie. The question I have about that is, well, does that override 14 years of personal voter shifts in a district where Massey’s won every single primary 75% plus?”
Meckler added that some of the broader trends that have been chipping away at Trump’s 2024 coalition probably won’t be too much of a factor in this primary. For example, Trump has been shedding support among Hispanic and Latino voters, but the district is just 5% Hispanic. Likewise, Trump has lost support among young men, but in Meckler’s assessment, this demographic is unlikely to be decisive in this GOP primary.
Ultimately, Meckler said that he’ll be closely watching the margin on election night, because if Gallrein comes close to winning, even a victory for Massie might end up being seen as a moral triumph for Trump.
“If Massie gets under 55%, that’s a seriously wounded incumbent, and Trump can claim a moral victory. He won’t love it, but he’ll claim a moral victory there,” Meckler said. “If he drives [Massie] down to 55%, that’s bad. If [Massie] wins 60% or over, what you see is that his brand and his constituent service beat the presidential ballistic missile, and that’s a really big deal, right? The president and all this money coming at you, if he’s over 60% that really says something about Massie’s personal brand.”
