Trump-endorsed John Gibbs is projected to upset establishment Republican Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump.
Meijer, one of three impeachment Republicans on Tuesday’s ballot and the sixth to leave Congress after voting to impeach Trump, was projected to lose to Gibbs early Wednesday morning by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report with 44 percent of the vote reporting. Gibb’s projected victory is an underdog upset.
Meijer’s voting record likely played a large part in his defeat. After voting to impeachment Trump in 2021, Meijer was censured by the Calhoun County Executive Committee of the Republican Party. An heir to his family’s big business fortune, Meijer also voted in 2021 with the establishment to increase the “inflow of cheap blue-collar migrants into jobs held by American residents of rural districts,” Breitbart News reported. In June, the congressman supported President Joe Biden’s gun control legislation.
Meijer is the second pro-impeachment Republican to lose a primary (four others opted to retire). With no realistic primary path for #WYAL Rep. Liz Cheney (R), there will be at most 3/10 pro-impeachment Rs remaining in the House in 2023.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 3, 2022
Gibbs, 43, a former political appointee in Trump’s White House to the Housing and Urban Development agency, positioned himself in the primary as an American First Republican. “There’s somewhat of a low-grade civil war happening in our party right now,” Gibbs explained Monday. “The feeling among the bulk of the voters is that the party is going in a direction that doesn’t represent what regular people want anymore.”
Gibbs attended Stanford University and later developed the iPhone at Apple in Silicon Valley. He also served as a Christian missionary for seven years in Japan. Earning his masters at Harvard, he then went to work in the Trump administration.
— John Gibbs for MI-3 (@votejohngibbs) August 3, 2022
Gibbs’s campaign was contested by large amounts of money from groups outside of Michigan that supported Meijer. One group, backed by Meijer’s wealthy family, donated $1.4 million to defeat Gibbs.
Peter Meijer speaks at a campaign rally on Oct. 14, 2020, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Meijer’s campaign spending also dwarfed Gibbs’s. The incumbent spent over $2 million to defeat the challenger, while Gibbs’s campaign fought with about $335,000 total spent.
Democratic congressional candidate Hillary Scholten in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (Cory Morse/The Grand Rapids Press via AP)
Ironically, the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) additionally supported Gibb’s campaign, donating $425,000 worth of TV commercials in the Grand Rapids area. “The ad was a fake attack on Gibbs that was seen by many in both parties as a move to promote his name among Trump’s base,” the Detroit News reported. “It claimed Gibbs is ‘too conservative’ for west Michigan but also said he was ‘handpicked’ by Trump to run for Congress, worked in his administration and would pursue Trump’s policies in office.”
Gibbs will now face radical Democrat Hillary Scholten. A former Department of Justice attorney, Scholten has campaigned on a Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) like platform. According to her campaign website, she supports gun control, federalizing local elections, spending large sums during Biden’s 40-year-high inflation, enlarging government-sector unions, and expanding Obamacare.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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