Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp lost his bid for re-election in Tuesday’s Kansas primary, and it wasn’t even close.
Physician Roger Marshall defeated him by a 14-point margin, taking down one of the most prominent conservative rebels on Capitol Hill.
For all the national implications of the result, Huelskamp got caught up in a statewide shift in favor of more moderate Republicans, political observers say.
His defeat was tied to the unpopular policies of conservative GOP Gov. Sam Brownback that brought more traditional Republican voters to the polls in higher numbers.
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His allies on the conservative Freedom Caucus were quick to blame the House Republican leadership and special interest money, but in reality, Huelskamp was simply undone by his caustic reputation in his district.
He’d drawn the wrath of the state’s agricultural interests for his voting record and his removal from the House Agriculture Committee in a spat with Republican House leaders.
He made his own political bed, and he was going to have to lie in it.
Patrick Miller, University of Kansas
“He made his own political bed,” said Patrick Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Kansas, “and he was going to have to lie in it.”
Huelskamp, first elected in 2010, had survived a primary challenge in 2014. But on Tuesday, he lost 49 of the 63 counties in the “Big First” congressional district.
He even lost Reno County, where his family lives, by a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent, the same result district-wide.
Huelskamp’s campaign didn’t return requests to comment Wednesday morning.
49 Number of counties Huelskamp lost of the 63 in his district
Reporters from several media organizations were asked by the Huelskamp campaign to leave a “victory” party in Hutchinson on Tuesday evening as the results began coming in.
In a statement posted to the campaign’s Facebook page late Tuesday, Huelskamp blamed “billionaires and Washington special interests” for his defeat.
“Tonight Washington won and Kansas lost,” he wrote. “And all it took was a mere $3 million together with the conspiring liberal media to buy a Congressional seat in the most expensive primary in Kansas history.”
At the end of the day, if it was hand-to-hand combat, man to man, I would have beat him.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp
The race did attract a large amount of outside spending, including more than $1 million from the ESA Fund, backed by wealthy philanthropists, and $400,000 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In a statement Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, praised Huelskamp’s commitment to fighting for “smaller, more accountable government.”
“For this,” Jordan said, “he was punished by the same party insiders and special interests that Republican voters across the country overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box throughout the presidential nomination process.”
We need to heal our wounds and get our state going in the right direction.
Roger Marshall, the victor in Tuesday’s 1st Congressional District primary
However, Miller said that down-ballot races drove turnout higher in the district, and that more traditional Kansas Republicans made substantial gains there in state legislative races.
Miller said he wasn’t surprised that Marshall won, but didn’t expect the margin to be so wide. A Fort Hays State University poll last month had the candidates tied, with about 15 percent of surveyed voters undecided.
“We know in races where there are fair number of undecideds,” Miller said, “they tend to break decisively for the challenger.”
Curtis Tate: 202-383-6018, @tatecurtis
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