As recently as 2020, Peter Meijer’s appeared to have a bright future in Republican politics. The West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran won a congressional race in one of Michigan’s most competitive districts, and looked like a safe bet for re-election in 2022.
That didn’t quite work out. In early 2021, Meijer was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in the aftermath of Jan. 6, and a year later, the congressman faced a far-right challenge from a former Trump administration official with a history of promoting inflammatory conspiracy theories and taking ridiculous positions on a wide range of issues.
Meijer narrowly lost his primary, and Democrats soon after flipped his seat from “red” to “blue.”
A year later, the Michigan Republican, apparently hoping his party had learned a lesson from his primary defeat, launched a comeback bid and kicked off a U.S. Senate campaign. As NBC News reported, that didn’t work out, either.
Former Rep. Peter Meijer, who lost his House seat after voting to impeach then-President Donald Trump, has dropped out of a crowded Republican Senate primary in Michigan. Angela Benander, a spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, confirmed to NBC News that Meijer withdrew his candidacy ahead of a Friday afternoon deadline.
It was a rather abrupt shift: On April 23, Meijer turned in his petition signatures, celebrated their delivery to state election officials, and appeared to have qualified for the ballot. On April 26, the former congressman exited the race.
Trump, not surprisingly, was delighted.
“Congratulations to all Good Republicans!” the former president wrote to his social media platform just hours after the news broke in Michigan. “Peter Meijer, one of the 10 Impeachers of your Favorite President, ME, and someone thought of to have a very good political future, has just withdrawn from the Senate Race in the Great State of Michigan. Once he raised his very little and delicate hand to Impeach President Trump, his Political Career was OVER! … Happily, the 10 Impeachers are just about gone.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that it’s deeply weird to see Trump talk about others having “very little” hands given his own difficulties on the issue.
Rather, let’s focus on the former president’s preoccupation with the fate of the Impeachment 10.
Circling back to our recent coverage, when Trump was impeached for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, it resulted in the most bipartisan impeachment vote in American history. Against a backdrop in which Republicans seemed eager to move on from their failed, defeated president, 10 GOP House members voted with the Democratic majority in favor of the impeachment resolution, and they had every reason to believe they’d be vindicated by history.
History, however, doesn’t elect members of Congress. Voters do.
As the defeated, scandal-plagued, failed former president reclaimed control over the party, and “leaders” — I’m using the word loosely — such as Kevin McCarthy scurried to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee, members of the Impeachment 10 came to realize that it didn’t matter that they were right. What mattered was that much of their radicalized political party wouldn’t tolerate their heresy, which would overshadow other parts of their careers in public service. Some saw the direction in the prevailing winds and decided to avoid the indignity of defeat. It’s why four members of the contingent — Ohio’s Anthony Gonzalez, New York’s John Katko, Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger, and Michigan’s Fred Upton — announced their retirements before the 2022 primary season even began in earnest. Four more thought they could maintain the trust of the voters who’d elected them in the first place: Two of these four — Gibbs and Kent — ended up losing in the 2022 general elections, allowing Democrats to flip the seats. As for the other two members of the Impeachment 10, California’s David Valadao narrowly won his re-election bid in 2022, while Washington’s Dan Newhouse cruised to a landslide victory two years ago. Trump has largely left Valadao alone, but the former president apparently believes Washington’s 4th congressional district is conservative enough that he can help oust Newhouse without hurting the party. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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