North Carolina Congresswoman Renee Ellmers lost her primary bid for re-election Tuesday night, following a court-ordered round of redistricting that forced her to run against fellow incumbent George Holding.
Before she was endorssed recently by Donald Trump, Ellmers had been viewed as a candidate who had “gone Washington” and become part of the establishment. She had risen through the ranks of Republican leadership to become the chair of the Republican Women’s Policy Committee.
In March, on the day of the North Carolina presidential primary, she announced that she had voted for Trump. He chose to reciprocate just a few days ago, but to little effect — Ellmers appears headed to a third-place finish in a three-way race with less than 25 percent of the vote.
Ellmers was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2010 over longtime Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., and has had her fair share of dustups in the short time since.
There was one that involved me. In 2014, during a meeting of Republican women discussing how to combat the Left’s claim of a Republican “war on women,” Ellmers said: “We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s level and what everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go.”
When other media outlets picked up on her comments, Ellmers accused me of being a “liberal woman reporter” who had taken her “completely out of context.” So I posted the audio of her comments and life went on. If that had been Ellmers’ only problem during her stint as a congresswoman, she might be on her way to a fourth term.
She began her career in Washington on frosty terms with the National Republican Congressional Committee, since she accused them of not supporting her when her 2010 election finished very close, resulting in a recount.
Brushing that initial dustup aside, Ellmers rose from Tea Party member to a member of the House leadership, and now to a Trump endorser. One group that backed Ellmers in that first race — Americans for Prosperity — is now working to oust her from Congress. Other conservative-leaning groups, including the Club for Growth and the pro-life groups National Right-to-Life Committee and the Susan B. Anthony List, also worked against her.
Ellmers fell afoul of pro-lifers because of her efforts to stop a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. Ellmers opposed the bill because a provision allowing rape victims to obtain an abortion included a clause that required them to have formally reported her assault to police in order to qualify for the exemption.
Ellmers’ loss on Tuesday probably had more to do with the abortion bill than her endorsement of Trump, since the New York businessman won the state back in March. Still, it was a strange transition from her time as a Tea Party darling to an establishment member and then to a Trump supporter.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
