Is Thomas Massie vulnerable to a Trump-backed challenger? Northern KYians weigh in

Yahoo

27-06-2025

President Donald Trump says he's going all-in on a primary challenge against Rep. Thomas Massie.
But will it work?
It's an open question for Northern Kentucky Republicans, who are anticipating a GOP primary challenger to step up and get the support — both rhetorical and monetary — of Trump and his network.
The president has promised to 'be out in Kentucky campaigning really hard' against Massie, lambasting the congressman as 'lazy,' disloyal and 'nonproductive.'
'He votes, 'NO!' on everything, because he thinks it makes him cool, but he's not cool, he's a LOSER,' Trump wrote on social media earlier this week.
A political action committee, 'MAGA KY,' has been set up specifically to beat Massie in 2026, with members of the Trump network ready to lead the charge.
No candidate has been publicly tapped by the president or his network as of yet.
Dating back to Trump's first term, the president's feud with Massie is nothing new — it's notable, though, that the president has endorsed him as recently as 2022 — but it's reached a fever pitch in the last few months.
Massie was one of the lone Republicans to stand against Trump's budget bill on the grounds that it spent too much, and the 4th Congressional District representative's opposition to the Trump administration's actions in Iran resulted in Trump's most recent tirade.
If voters like Charlie Coleman, a former local elected official in Campbell County, are any indication, then Massie might be in trouble.
Coleman has supported Massie in several previous election cycles, even visiting the congressman's farm to pick up yard signs in 2020. Now, he says he's likely to support a primary challenger if the challenger gets the president's backing.
'I like Thomas personally, but I'm not supporting his position,' Coleman said. 'To be a part of a team, you gotta follow your leadership. I support the president, and I wish Thomas did.'
But few think Massie will be a pushover, even if he draws Trump's full firepower.
The congressman and his allies think his brand in the district — and among a nationwide group of grassroots donors — is strong enough to weather the storm.
Massie told the Herald-Leader earlier this week that his name ID among GOP voters in the district is in the mid-70s, a pretty high mark for a congressman.
He didn't discount Trump's popularity in the district, but said it would be tough to erode his own support among voters who already know him and, based on his electoral results, like him.
'If I were running against Donald Trump, I'd be in trouble. It'd be a fair fight and he might even have the upper hand,' Massie told the Herald-Leader. 'The thing is, I'm not running against Donald Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump aren't moving to the district I'm running (in).
'I'm going to be running against somebody nobody's ever heard of, and I've got enough name ID and brand right now that somebody's gonna have to work really hard to erode that.'
State Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, is among Massie's closest allies in Frankfort. She was among the first of many legislators in the state GOP's unofficial 'Liberty' wing, a group that often aligns with and receives political support from Massie.
She thinks the type of voter that Coleman represents is off base.
The more common reaction to the latest in the long-running tiff between Trump and Massie, she said, is like that of someone watching two friends fight. While they still love both of their friends, they think one of them is in the right.
'Folks will say, 'I love our president, but he's wrong about Thomas Massie,'' Maddox said. 'Overwhelmingly, I believe they support him.'
There's also the problem of finding a suitable challenger.
Maddox pointed to the most recent primary contenders who tried to run 'to the Trump' of Massie. None of them netted more than 19%, even in 2020 when Trump was the sitting president and he was upset with Massie's alleged 'grandstanding' over forcing an in-person vote during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
None of those challengers have gone on to achieve political success.
'Effectively, they are going to alienate themselves from any future aspirations they may have in this congressional district and beyond,' Maddox said. 'History is very foreboding.'
Some Democrats in the region agree that finding a challenger will prove difficult.
Marisa McNee, a Kenton County resident and former spokesperson for the Kentucky Democratic Party, said that there's a coalition issue: The Republican Party in the region is still split between more establishment Republicans who don't actually like Trump, or Massie and Trump supporters who, by and large, support Massie.
She referred to those 'establishment,' largely business-oriented Republicans as 'chamber Republicans' after the chamber of commerce.
'The chamber Republicans are deeply hated by MAGA world. They're just not aligned. You'd have to find someone who's comfortable in one world and palatable to the other,' McNee said. 'That's the game they're trying to play, and that's why it's tricky.'
That group of chamber Republicans has largely disliked Massie for a while, she said. But an embrace of Trump from one of their ranks would likely come across as disingenuous.
'If you hate Massie, do you like Trump? I don't know anyone who fits in that category, personally,' McNee said.
Adam Koenig, a former Northern Kentucky state representative, 'can't stand' Thomas Massie.
'He's ineffective. He's a waste of space, to be perfectly frank,' Koenig said. 'He does no constituent services. He doesn't meet with a lot of people. I believe his support is not even a mile wide, but it's definitely not an inch deep.'
Koenig served for more than a decade in the General Assembly before he was taken out in a wave of successful Massie-backed primary challengers in 2022.
He said Massie's lack of tangible accomplishments for the district might play well for an opponent.
'You'd like to think that someone could run a race on 'The man has never done anything. Where else could you get paid $180-some thousand a year and have no accomplishments but keep your job,'' Koenig said.
Speculation over who might heed Trump's call to take Massie down has abounded in the weeks since the president's first tilt with the congressman.
The two names most circulated are state Sen. Aaron Reed, R-Shelbyville, and state Rep. Kim Moser, R-Taylor Mill. Neither has responded to requests for comment from the Herald-Leader.
When national outlet Axios first floated Reed's name he responded by calling it 'fake news.'
However, the Navy Seal veteran and gun store owner has very publicly praised Trump's actions in the Middle East and interacted on social media with the same Trump-aligned consultant promising to lead the charge against Massie.
When that consultant, former Trump 2024 co-campaign manager Chris Lacivita, posted a photo of a soldier throwing a frag grenade, Reed responded 'that move looks familiar.'
Some hoping to unseat Massie think activation of more affluent suburban areas of the district like Oldham and Shelby counties outside of Louisville, where Reed is from, could serve to moderate the primary electorate.
Two prominent Oldham County politicians signaled to the Herald-Leader that they would not jump in the race: Attorney General Russell Coleman and former AG and current U.S. Senate candidate Daniel Cameron.
A Coleman spokesperson told the Herald-Leader 'he is going to serve the full term he was elected to,' which runs out in 2027. Cameron's spokesperson said he was 'focused on (the) Senate.'
Scott Jennings, a Republican public relations executive whose pundit role on CNN has catapulted him to stardom during the Trump era, has been mentioned as a possibility, though most of the chatter has centered around a potential run for U.S. Senate.
Massie believes that the most effective challenger would be a person without much a voting record, whose views on the issues are therefore more malleable and less easy to pin down for attack ads.
Koenig did not have any prescription for a formula to bridge the worlds of 'establishment' and MAGA, but as someone who has previously been courted to run against Massie he said the money will absolutely be there.
'The money is ready for someone viewed as legit. You've just gotta find someone who's viewed as legit,' Koenig said.
Massie hinted that he could raise up to $10 million if put through the ringer of a competitive Trump-backed primary. Trump's attacks have largely boosted his grassroots fundraising, he says.
According to a post on social media, Massie raised more than $154,000 from Sunday to Wednesday and has about $1.5 million on hand.
He also mentioned super PAC money.
It's possible, some have speculated, that a Massie supporter who also happens to be the richest man in the world might help. Multi-billionaire Elon Musk has shown love for Massie on his social media platform, X, where the congressman has 1.3 million followers.
Musk, a similarly science-minded spending hawk, has had his own issues with Trump in recent weeks following a stint where he led Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. Though Musk helped power Trump's reelection with huge outside spending efforts, he announced plans to cut back on such political spending last month.
Even if there is a spending gap between Massie and his opponent, state Rep. Steven Doan, R-Erlanger, the Massie ally who unseated Koenig, thinks the money won't matter.
'People have known him for the 12 years that he's been in office and they've seen how he's fought against the party all the time; I mean, he was instrumental in taking John Boehner out as speaker' Doan said.
'And even when the whole Republican Party structure tries to clap back at Thomas, he seems to survive it.'