In the end, it wasn’t even close. Kansas congressman Tim Huelskamp lost the Republican primary for his seat to a political novice, obstetrician Roger Marshall, by 15 points. Local news station KWCH reported just an hour after polls closed Tuesday night that Huelskamp’s campaign staff “has told media members to leave the watch party for tonight’s primary election.” That was the first and most telling indication the sitting Republican was toast.
Huelskamp is the fourth incumbent GOP House member to lose his party’s nomination this year and the first to lose to a genuine challenger, not a fellow congressman in a redistricted match-up. A three-term House member who came to Washington in the Tea Party wave of 2010, he was viewed—depending on who you are—either as a principled leader among the most conservative House Republicans or as a troublemaking rabble-rouser who made the perfect the enemy of the good.
