Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp’s surprising primary defeat Tuesday at the hands of a candidate who was backed by the Republican establishment could serve as a blueprint for future efforts to oust Tea Party members in GOP primaries.
While Huelskamp’s race was characterized by attacks on his handling of issues specific to his rural congressional district, the success of efforts to frame a deeply conservative lawmaker as a Washington insider could embolden the groups who ousted Huelskamp to try the same tactics on other members who have bucked party leadership.
Tom Davis, former Virginia congressman and former chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, believes such an approach could work again.
“I think the model is replicable,” Davis told the Washington Examiner. “It shows you what the path to victory is.”
Davis said that path involved a “strong local component,” an influx of cash from outside the district and a serious candidate to oppose the incumbent.
In Huelskamp’s case, the intensity of local concern over agricultural legislation caught fire when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Ending Spending political action committee poured money into a race that pitted the three-term congressman against a charismatic obstetrician.
Huelskamp had become an enemy of House Republican leadership under former Speaker John Boehner after voting against the budget bill in 2012, a move that cost him his seat on the agriculture committee. Local organizations in his district used the loss of that seat to hammer Huelskamp for his failure to represent constituents in the heavily rural district.
“I think that the results of that race should send chills down the spine of every conservative in the country,” said Jason Pye, spokesman for FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group that backed Huelskamp.
“Regardless of whether there were local factors at play or not, it’s irrelevant,” Pye added.
The U.S. Chamber and Ending Spending, along with prominent district groups like the Kansas Farm Bureau, upended the standard GOP primary playbook by backing a political outsider over an incumbent lawmaker. The establishment-linked groups painted Huelskamp, a consistent conservative who joined the House Freedom Caucus, as a Washington elite who had lost touch with his constituents.
In an election year driven by the rise of political insurgency, the anti-Washington message proved especially potent.
Pye said the formula used to remove Huelskamp could surface in primaries against other Freedom Caucus members now that the establishment has “put a bounty on these guys’ heads.”
Three months before the general election, the danger has all but passed for most members of the passionately conservative caucus this cycle.
But in 2018, party insiders could apply some of the lessons learned from Huelskamp’s demise to the districts represented by his ilk.
What’s more, the establishment’s desire to rid the House of its vocal Freedom Caucus members may only grow stronger after the election in November.
The 42 members who presently make up the Freedom Caucus wield influence in the lower chamber due to their ability to deny passage of key legislation on a party-line vote if they band together to defeat it, forcing Republican leadership to seek Democratic votes, make concessions to conservatives or abandon bills altogether.
While Freedom Caucus members don’t always vote in lockstep, they have the power to derail the GOP leadership’s legislative agenda if they do. Earlier this year, the group of conservatives dealt Ryan an embarrassing blow by blocking the first budget he tried to shepherd through the House as its speaker.
But after the election, Republicans will likely hold fewer House seats in total, as Democrats are actively targeting more than a dozen seats presently held by GOP members. A winnowed-down GOP conference could allow the Freedom Caucus members to exert even more influence over the remaining majority.
“I do think that the Freedom Caucus, if they manage to keep the rest of their numbers, they’re going to have more influence,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist.
However, O’Connell said the factors of Huelskamp’s race were too unique to translate easily to other primaries.
“I think this is more of a perfect storm,” he said of the confluence of local interests and outside money the fueled Huelskamp’s ouster.
“This could be replicated, but I’m not expecting this to be anything more than a one-off or an outlier at best,” O’Connell added.
Roger Marshall, who bested Huelskamp by 13 points, hammered the congressman for his votes against a farm bill that would have provided staples like crop insurance to farmers in his district. Huelskamp had said he did so because the legislation spent far more on food stamps than agricultural programs.
While the local dynamics of the Kansas primary were particularly strong, so too was the margin of defeat for Huelskamp. That means districts with less-potent local angles could still produce competitive primaries for conservative members who are targeted, although such races might result in tighter tallies.
Davis, who ran the national committee dedicated to putting Republicans in the House, said the outcome in Kansas’ first district likely incentivized establishment groups to go after other Tea Party figures.
“There’s no question this whets the appetite of folks who are on the other side of this thing.”
