Vanceburg, Kentucky
Joni Pugh seems like she’s caught in the midst of a bitter household feud between her president and her congressman.
As a loyal Republican, she likes them each – and that’s the place her predicament begins.
No Republican has infuriated President Donald Trump greater than Rep. Thomas Massie, which has positioned him in a precarious place heading into Tuesday’s Republican major in Kentucky. The race is already one of the crucial costly major contests ever, with greater than $29 million spent on promoting alone, organising the most important political test Massie has ever confronted.
Their long-running duel can be settled by voters like Pugh, who has admired Trump for the final decade and Massie for for much longer.
“I’m a little more worried than I’ve ever been for him because he’s getting such pushback from Trump,” Pugh stated. “I’m not putting Trump down at all because I’m very much a fan of his, but I’m still going to vote for Thomas. He’s a great guy and is very careful about how he wants our taxpayer money to be spent.”
Here in northeastern Kentucky, voters say the marketing campaign appears to be getting nastier by the day, with assault advertisements that includes AI-generated photographs flooding tv screens, flyers filling up mailboxes and gossip working red-hot in regards to the twists and turns of which aspect has the higher hand.
“You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere,” Pugh stated of the promoting deluge. “That’s what really worries me. I’m afraid he won’t make it this time. I don’t think he’s ever gone through anything like this.”
Massie faces Ed Gallrein, a farmer and former Navy SEAL whom Trump and his allies recruited into the race. Trump paid a go to to Kentucky in March to make his alternative clear as he invited Gallrein to the stage.
“Give me somebody with a warm body to beat Massie,” Trump stated. “And I got somebody with a warm body, but a big, beautiful brain and a great patriot. He’s unbelievable.”
For months, Massie ran with an air of confidence that his contrarian model amongst buddies and neighbors in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District would carry him to an eighth time period. Blue Massie indicators dot the panorama throughout his district alongside the Ohio River, which stretches from the jap suburbs of Louisville to the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati and the outskirts of Appalachia.
But the competition is remarkably shut within the last days of the race, GOP strategists and occasion officers say, with even some longtime allies questioning if the tide has turned.
“The race is 100% Trump vs. Massie,” Shane Noem, chairman of the Kenton County Republican Party, advised NCS. “It’s become a pick-a-side moment.”
It’s laborious to pinpoint simply when precisely the connection between Trump and Massie first soured. Massie has fought the institution of each events since first profitable his seat 14 years in the past within the tea occasion period as a fierce deficit hawk.
He has constantly opposed Republican priorities in Congress, together with navy spending and overseas assist, and defied occasion management on one invoice after one other. Last yr, he was one among two House Republicans to vote in opposition to the president’s massive domestic policy and spending cuts package often called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“We’ll get 100% of the vote except for this guy named Thomas Massie,” Trump stated on the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this yr, happening to name the congressman a “moron.”
“It’s like they just vote no. They love voting no.”
Massie additionally helped lead the cost to direct the Justice Department to launch its investigative recordsdata into convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein. The president in the end signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act after months of calling the difficulty a “Democratic hoax.”
“There’s three branches of government and we’re supposed to keep each other accountable,” Massie stated exterior the Capitol, surrounded by Epstein abuse survivors. “That’s what we’re doing here today in the people’s house.”
He’s additionally been among the many loudest Republican critics of the Iran battle, which he stated has made him a goal for robust supporters of Israel.
Inside the White House, advisers say, there are few political figures of both occasion – and positively no Republicans – who irritate Trump greater than Massie. The president met with Gallrein within the Oval Office on October 17, urging him to problem Massie. Per week later, he did.
“I’ve dedicated my life to serving my country, and I’m ready to answer the call again,” Gallrein stated as he introduced his candidacy. “This district is Trump Country. The president doesn’t need obstacles in Congress — he needs backup.”
The president has requested in regards to the race regularly in current weeks, aides say, expressing his intent to defeat the seven-term congressman to ship a message to Republicans that opposing Trump has penalties.
“You are next,” prime Trump adviser Chris LaCivita wrote in an X submit to Massie final week after Indiana voters sided with Trump-backed candidates who ran in opposition to Republicans who stood as much as White House calls for to attract new congressional maps in December.
In one among his closing advertisements, Massie reminds voters that he has usually stood with Trump, desirous to press his Republican credentials and blunt any impressions that he reflexively opposes him.
“Let’s just talk about the elephant in the room,” Massie stated. “I agree with President Trump a whole lot more than I disagree with him. The list is long: the SAVE America Act to require proof of citizenship to vote, stopping immigrant welfare, fighting the woke agenda, defending the Second Amendment, protecting the life of the unborn, securing the border.”
It’s removed from the contrarian model, with an impartial and libertarian streak, that Massie has usually touted and plenty of constituents have embraced for years.
In 2024, Trump carried the district with 67% of the vote, whereas Massie ran unopposed.
“There’s a lot of support for Trump here in the community. There’s a lot of support for Thomas in the community,” stated Joe Bentley, a goat farmer and schoolteacher who as soon as served alongside Massie on the Lewis County board. “They’re different characters, but they’re very similar.”
State Rep. Steven Doan, a Republican and longtime buddy of Massie who can be on the poll this yr, stated he has heard one query above all as he knocks on doorways within the district.
“How do I square this? Trump doesn’t like him, but I like him and I don’t know what to do,” Doan advised NCS, recalling his conversations with Republican voters. “I always compare it to mommy and daddy fighting. We love both of those people. We love Trump, we love Thomas.”
Yet some critics are extra involved by Massie’s voting file, significantly on spending measures associated to Kentucky, way over the lingering discord with Trump.
“Thomas Massie has burnt every bridge he could possibly have to be effective,” stated Steve Frank, a former Covington metropolis commissioner. “If we have a need for more money for the new bridge that we’re trying to get build or at the airport or if there’s a regulatory issue because trucking is such a big thing around here, he’s not going to get a hearing.”
When the ballots are counted Tuesday evening, the end result might present a window into whether or not assault advertisements and a presidential megaphone can outweigh a lifetime of relationships Massie has constructed throughout his nook of Kentucky.
“I’ve known him all my life and I’ll be voting for him because of what kind of person he is,” stated Kenny Claxon, a retired cook dinner and restaurant proprietor, stopping for a second on his stroll round Vanceburg. “He’s the right person for the job. It doesn’t matter what Trump or anybody else says.”
Conversations with greater than a dozen folks right here – practically all of whom voted for Trump – confirmed indicators of assist and fear for Massie. Several residents puzzled aloud whether or not their congressman might face up to the political onslaught in opposition to him.
Not Ramona Bivens, who believes the assaults might backfire.
“I’ll vote for Thomas because Trump’s giving him such a hard time,” Bivens stated, holding a cigarette as she ate a scorching canine on the Garrison Shortstop diner. “I just think it’s silly. It’s politics and they’re running for office. They’re not running against each other.”