The next battle along former President Donald Trump’s impeachment revenge warpath is a GOP primary contest in western Michigan featuring a lopsided fundraising contest that favors one of his biggest congressional enemies — Rep. Peter Meijer.
Meijer—a first-term Republican who voted to impeach Trump—on Wednesday debuts his inaugural television ad of the cycle, shared first with POLITICO.
Titled “Pure Michigan,” it highlights Meijer’s Iraq deployment in the Army Reserves and hints that he supports some of the former president’s signature policies, including building a border wall, but without mentioning Trump. “I am fighting for the values that run through every community and every person in West Michigan,” Meijer says.
“I’m running on my record as a proven conservative who is committed to upholding the Constitution and delivering results for West Michigan, and our first TV ad underscores this dedication,” Meijer told POLITICO in a statement.
Meijer, who is squaring off against John Gibbs, a Trump-endorsed former Housing and Urban Development official, has outraised his challenger by a more than 10-to-1 margin in the Grand Rapids-based district. Meijer has a $1.5 million war chest to Gibbs’ $81,000, and the incumbent has reserved $650,000 in television and radio ads through the Aug. 2 primary. On Tuesday, the ad-tracking firm AdImpact reported a $37,365 buy from Meijer in the Grand Rapids media market.
Meijer’s primary campaign is yet another test of whether Trump’s endorsement can elevate a MAGA challenger not just with voters but among donors, and of the former president’s sway in a district that skews suburban and Democratic.
Meijer isn’t the only candidate in Trump’s crosshairs for supporting his impeachment. On Tuesday in South Carolina, Rep. Tom Rice, who joined Meijer and eight other House Republicans in voting for Trump’s impeachment for his actions on Jan. 6, failed to advance to a runoff against state Rep. Russell Fry, whom Trump endorsed—a possible bad omen for Meijer’s chances.
Meijer and Rice, though, have taken different tacks toward messaging their impeachment votes. While Meijer doesn’t sidestep his vote, he also hasn’t made it the cornerstone of his re-election bid. Instead, Meijer has focused on President Joe Biden’s record on supply chain disruptions, inflation, and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, where Meijer flew last August on an unauthorized, secret bipartisan junket with Massachusetts Democrat and fellow veteran Rep. Seth Moulton. Rice, by contrast, has drawn attention to his impeachment vote during campaign events.
In Michigan, it’s increasingly evident that Trump’s endorsement of Gibbs has failed to spark a fundraising spree. For his main committee account, Gibbs has raised $227,502 since launching his campaign last November, compared to Meijer’s $2.3 million over the election cycle to date. Gibbs’s Great Lakes Leadership Committee—a joint-fundraising committee run by Jason Boles, the campaign’s treasurer who fulfills similar roles for Trump-aligned candidates Herschel Walker for Senate and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia—raised $292,341 at a fundraiser held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida earlier this year. It remains unclear how much Gibbs’s campaign will pocket from that haul. All together, Gibbs has …read more
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/15/next-stop-on-trumps-primary-warpath-michigan-00039688