Never in nearly 42 years in Congress has Rep. Chris Smith had a primary quite like his last — when he spent the final weeks getting bombarded by angry constituents who felt he crossed President Donald Trump.

The New Jersey Republican won renomination with his lowest primary vote share ever, after he voted to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. And his opponent seized on it, stoking an angry and anti-incumbent mood sweeping through Republican primaries around the country.

Republican members from Utah to Texas to South Dakota who also voted for the Jan. 6 commission have had a similar experience, marking an especially intense primary season for the GOP. The bottom has dropped out for the Republicans who did support a Jan. 6 investigation: They are running 13 points weaker than their average colleague in their primaries, according to a POLITICO analysis of 2022 primary results so far.

But even Republicans who didn’t take that vote are running into stronger primary opposition than in the last midterm, the analysis shows. The average incumbent House Republican pulled 88 percent support in party primaries four years ago. That’s dropped this year to 75 percent for GOP members who didn’t vote for the Jan. 6 commission — and cratered to 62 percent for the incumbents who did back it.

Altogether, the numbers paint a portrait of an angry base sending a message to its ambassadors in Washington: Don’t step out of line, or else.

“Simply being an incumbent puts you in those crosshairs,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah).

POLITICO’s analysis averaged results of all of the completed vote counts in House GOP primaries so far this year.

The current House Select Committee on Jan. 6, which has grabbed the spotlight with televised hearings this month, is not the commission that 35 House Republicans supported. That proposed investigative body died in the Senate, but that nuance is often lost on voters — and ignored by opponents eager to exploit an angry GOP electorate looking to punish any whiff of disloyalty to Trump.

“The irony is the commission that I voted for would have avoided this current commission,” said Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), who won his primary — but, with votes still being tallied, has less than 60 percent support from GOP voters. “My challenger looks at this as an opportunity, thinking he can disingenuously persuade people otherwise. It’s just not accurate.”

Five of the 35 Republican members who voted for that investigation had primaries on Tuesday night. One, Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), prevailed after being forced into a runoff in which his opponent continued to weaponize the commission vote. Another, Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), lost to Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) in a redistricting-created clash where Miller leaned heavily on Davis’s Jan. 6 vote.

The stats for the commission voters are stark. Heading into Tuesday’s primaries, more than half (eight out of 15) of the members who voted for the Jan. 6 commission got less than 60 percent of the vote in a GOP primary — dangerous territory for …read more

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/30/republicans-jan-6-probe-primaries-backlash-00043242