Comment Rep. Dan Newhouse, one of 10 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, advanced to the general election, surviving a challenge from a candidate backed by the former president. Newhouse advanced from Tuesday’s all-party primary in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, The Associated Press reported Friday. He will face Democrat Doug White, who was also projected by the Associated Press to advance to Friday’s general election. Meanwhile, in the neighboring 3rd District, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) was in a tight battle with Joe Kent, a veteran Trump supporter who has called the people arrested in the Jan. 6 probe “political prisoners ». Under Washington state’s nonpartisan primary system, all candidates are on the same primary ballot, regardless of party, and the top two advance to the general election. Although somewhat unique in its format, the Washington state primary served as the latest test of the ability of Republicans who opposed Trump to survive his attempts to unseat them. Of the other GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach Trump, four have announced they will retire from Congress. Reps. Tom Rice (SC) and Peter Meijer (Mich.) lost their primaries, while Rep. David G. Valadao (Calif.) survived his all-party primary. The Aug. 16 primary in Wyoming will decide the political fate of the group’s final congresswoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who is vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent money to help conservative challengers in both Meijer and Valadao, and is targeting both districts in November. The national party is not focusing on Washington’s 4th Congressional District, the state’s most reliably Republican division, which Trump carried in 2020 by nearly 20 points. In that district, Newhouse faced Trump-endorsed challenger Lauren Culp. In Herrera Beutler’s 3rd District race, the general election runner-up will face Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner who the AP has predicted will advance. Newhouse and Herrera Beutler had significantly outspent their opponents and hoped to capitalize on a crowded field of pro-Trump challengers. Both have lost significant Republican support since their 2020 re-elections, when they won more than 50 percent of the all-party primary vote. Herrera Beutler also spoke publicly about a key phone call during the Capitol attack between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Trump had “initially repeated the lie that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol,” Herrera Beutler said McCarthy told her. According to Herrera Beutler, after McCarthy told Trump that his supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump replied, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” Culp, a former sheriff and Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate, predicted in an interview before the election that Newhouse would struggle to unite Republican voters. The district, he said, wanted more conservative representation than Newhouse had offered. “Everybody I talk to is sick and tired of him,” Culp said. “Not only did he vote to impeach President Trump and vote for the January 6th commission, but he voted for anti-gun laws, he voted for big government spending.” When it came to Herrera Beutler’s primary, national Democrats didn’t spend, seeing a Southwest Washington district that voted for Trump by single digits as a tough target in a midterm where the party is on the defensive. While Herrera Beutler regularly ran ahead of the GOP ticket, Kent said in an interview that the popularity of Trump and his agenda was understated. “No Republican voter wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Oh my God, what are Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham saying about the issues of the day?’ Kent said. “They’re looking for the ‘America First’ messages that come from Trump, from Matt Gage, from Marjorie Taylor Green,” he added, naming some far-right members of Congress who have polarized. In an interview, Perez said the position was won in a race against Kent, whom she called a “classic package of great hair and bad ideas.”
