Rice, Tom (1957- )

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    Winning When Trump Is Against You: A How-To Guide

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    Are you a Republican who broke with Donald Trump but hope to win your upcoming primary?Maybe you said that Joe Biden is the duly elected president, condemned Trump’s demagogy on Jan. 6 or merely suggested that he tone down his social media posts.This handy guide is for you.So far, Trump’s preferred candidates have won primaries for Senate seats in Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. One of those candidates, J.D. Vance, overcame his past comments ripping Trump as “cultural heroin” by undergoing a wholesale reinvention of his political persona.Others, like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, have defied him and survived, without such a radical about-face.So what explains why some Trump critics succeed and others don’t? Here, based on a review of the results of this year’s primaries and conversations with roughly a dozen Republican strategists, are a few lessons:1. Do not vote to impeach him.This much is clear at the midway point of this year’s election calendar: The Republican base regards having voted to impeach Trump as the ultimate act of betrayal.The former president has already induced the retirements of four of the 10 House Republicans who supported his impeachment in 2021, while helping to oust another — Representative Tom Rice, who lost his coastal South Carolina seat on Tuesday by more than 25 percentage points.One impeacher, Representative David Valadao, is clinging to second place ahead of a Trump-friendly challenger in his district in California, where the top two vote winners of any party move forward to the general election.Four others — Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse of Washington, and Peter Meijer of Michigan — have yet to face the music.Only one of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump over Jan. 6 is running for re-election this year: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. In her case, a new voting system engineered by her allies could help her fend off a challenge from Kelly Tshibaka, a former federal government official who has the former president’s backing.2. Choose your location wisely.Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who did not vote to impeach Trump, made the former president’s enemies list for criticizing him on television after the events of Jan. 6, 2021. He called her a “grandstanding loser” and mocked her for filming a video praising him in front of Trump Tower in New York.But she never got fundamentally out of step with the South Carolina Lowcountry, a libertarian-leaning area with a history of electing iconoclastic lawmakers. Mace grew up in Goose Creek, just outside Charleston. That local familiarity gave her an intuitive feel for navigating issues like offshore drilling, which is unpopular in the coastal region.Understand the June 14 Primary ElectionsTakeaways: Republicans who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies did well in Nevada, while his allies had a mixed night in South Carolina. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.Election Deniers Prevail: Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s result are edging closer to wielding power over the next one.Nevada Races: Trump-inspired candidates captured key wins in the swing state, setting the stage for a number of tossup contests against embattled Democrats.Texas Special Election: Mayra Flores, a Republican, flipped a House seat in the Democratic stronghold of South Texas. Her win may only be temporary, however.“She did a much better job of staying aligned with her district,” said Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who was White House chief of staff during Trump’s first impeachment.Rice, by contrast, “almost took the attitude to dare people to throw him out,” Mulvaney said — standing emphatically by his impeachment vote despite representing a district that Trump won by more than 18 percentage points in 2020.The backbone of Rice’s district is fast-growing Horry County, a historically conservative region filled with “angry retirees,” according to Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist based in Greenville.But just down the coast in Mace’s more upscale district, Trump outperformed his approval ratings in 2020 — a sign, Felkel said, that there are “a lot of people who like Trump’s policies but don’t like Trump.”3. Speaking of which: Don’t break with the base on policy.Mace has been described as a moderate, but that’s a misnomer: She holds a 95 percent lifetime rating from the Club for Growth and a 94 percent score from Heritage Action, two groups that gauge lawmakers’ fealty to conservative principles. Rice scored 83 percent on both indexes — dangerous territory in the deep-red Pee Dee region of South Carolina.Although the Club for Growth stayed out of her race, Mace did benefit from $160,000 in spending from Americans for Prosperity, another conservative outside group funded by the Koch brothers. No national outside groups spent money on Rice’s behalf.Even minor heresies, like Mace’s support for legalizing marijuana, underscored her carefully cultivated image as an independent thinker and gave her a useful measure of distance from Trump.“Nancy polished the ring; she didn’t kiss the ring,” Felkel said.4. Run against a weak opponent.Russell Fry, the state representative who defeated Rice on Tuesday, was a known quantity in the state who happily played the part of a generic pro-Trump Republican.Katie Arrington, a former state lawmaker and Pentagon official who won Trump’s endorsement against Mace despite his private doubts about her candidacy, is another story.Voters certainly heard about the former president’s preference: At least 75 percent of voters in the district were aware that he had endorsed Arrington, according to the Mace campaign’s internal polling.Russell Fry’s election night event in Myrtle Beach, S.C. He happily played the part of a generic pro-Trump Republican against Representative Tom Rice, who voted in favor of impeachment.Jason Lee/The Sun News, via Associated PressBut Mace and her allies pummeled Arrington with ads accusing her of voting to raise gasoline taxes as a member of the state legislature, noting that her security clearance had been suspended while she was a defense official in the Trump administration and calling her “just as bad as Biden.”Mulvaney, who campaigned for Mace, noted an additional factor: that Arrington had lost the district to a Democrat in 2018.“Trump doesn’t like losers, and that’s what Katie was,” Mulvaney said.5. Get yourself a strong local surrogate.Although Arrington had Trump in her corner, Mace had the backing of Nikki Haley, a popular two-term former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Trump who now lives in the district.It proved enormously valuable. Like Mace, Haley has toed a careful line toward Trump, criticizing him on occasion but never fundamentally breaking with her former boss. She has an 82 percent approval rating among South Carolina Republicans, according to a poll conducted in May, just a few points below Trump.Haley raised more than $400,000 for Mace and appeared at two of her campaign rallies, in addition to recording get-out-the-vote videos and robocalls and sending texts. She also cut a television ad calling Mace “a fighter,” a “strong, pro-life mom” and a “tax-cutter” that ran for six weeks, airing 446 times in two ad markets. Mace’s campaign also mentioned Haley’s endorsement in its closing TV spot.Rice made the puzzling decision to invite Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, to stump for him in the closing weeks of the campaign. Ryan, who tangled often with Trump before quitting politics to join the board of Fox News and starting a small think tank, hails from Janesville, Wis. — more than 800 miles from Myrtle Beach.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      5 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Key Primary Races

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      From Las Vegas to Lewiston, Maine, the contours of critical midterm contests came into focus on Tuesday as Americans voted in major federal and state races across five states.In Nevada, which will be home to marquee House, Senate and governor’s races this fall, Republicans elevated several candidates who have embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election — even as candidates he endorsed had a mixed night in South Carolina, where he had sought to exact vengeance on two House incumbents.In Maine, a familiar set of characters moved into highly competitive general election races for governor and for a House seat that may be one of the most hard-fought in the nation. But in Texas, Republicans flipped a Rio Grande Valley seat — albeit only through the end of the year — as the party works to make inroads with Hispanic voters.Here are a few takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries:Election deniers prevail in Nevada.Republican candidates who have embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about election fraud were nominated for several positions of significant power in one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the nation.They include Jim Marchant, an organizer of a network of 2020 election deniers. Mr. Marchant, who prevailed in Nevada’s Republican primary for secretary of state, is also a failed congressional candidate who declared himself a “victim of election fraud” after being defeated in 2020, and has said his “No. 1 priority will be to overhaul the fraudulent election system in Nevada.”Mr. Marchant was among an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory in Nevada in 2020, and he has said he would have refused to certify the election had he been secretary of state at the time.Adam Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general who won his party’s Senate nomination on Tuesday with Mr. Trump’s backing, was one of the leaders of the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the results in Nevada.Adam Laxalt during a campaign stop in Moapa Valley, Nev., on Saturday.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesAnd in the Republican primary to challenge Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat, the two top finishers with 40 percent of the vote counted, according to The Associated Press, were Annie Black, a state lawmaker who said she was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Sam Peters, who has suggested he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election results and questioned the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory.Their victories come as a bipartisan House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has showcased testimony from Mr. Trump’s onetime top advisers discussing Mr. Trump’s claims.Understand the June 14 Primary ElectionsTakeaways: Republicans who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies did well in Nevada, while his allies had a mixed night in South Carolina. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.Election Deniers Prevail: Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s result are edging closer to wielding power over the next one.Nevada Races: Trump-inspired candidates captured key wins in the swing state, setting the stage for a number of tossup contests against embattled Democrats.Texas Special Election: Mayra Flores, a Republican, flipped a House seat in the Democratic stronghold of South Texas. Her win may only be temporary, however.“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, told the panel.Critical Nevada races come into focus.Nevada cemented its status as a focal point of the political universe on Tuesday, as several marquee general election contests took shape that will have significant implications for the balance of power in Washington.Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, will face off against Mr. Laxalt, who comes from a prominent political family. His positions on issues like election integrity may run afoul of some voters in a state that hasn’t supported a Republican for president since 2004.Supporters of Joe Lombardo at his election watch party in Las Vegas Tuesday night.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesBut Ms. Cortez Masto may be the Senate’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbent. And there are signs that Nevada, which currently has among the highest gas prices in the nation, may be notably difficult terrain for Democrats this year, as they grapple with a brutally challenging political environment shaped by issues including soaring inflation and President Biden’s weak approval rating.Those dynamics will also influence the governor’s race, as Gov. Steve Sisolak prepares for a challenge from Joe Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff. And all three of the state’s incumbent Democratic House members are running in highly competitive seats.South Carolina shows the power, and some limits, of a Trump endorsement.After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, two House members from South Carolina broke with most of their fellow Republicans to lash Mr. Trump as complicit in the assault. On Tuesday, only one of them prevailed over a Trump-backed primary challenger.Representative Nancy Mace, who’d said she held Mr. Trump “accountable for the events that transpired, for the attack on our Capitol,” defeated her challenger, Katie Arrington, a former state lawmaker. But Representative Tom Rice, who stunned many observers with his vote to impeach Mr. Trump, lost to State Representative Russell Fry as he campaigned in a more conservative district.Russell Fry with supporters in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Tuesday night after winning the Republican primary over Representative Tom Rice.Jason Lee/The Sun News, via Associated PressA Trump endorsement is not always dispositive, as other primary election results this year have demonstrated. But the former president’s continued sway over the Republican base is undeniable. And openly challenging him remains politically dangerous for Republican candidates, as several who voted to impeach him have experienced.Despite her initial sharp criticism of Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace — who did not vote to impeach — went on to make overtures to Trump loyalists, including by issuing an appeal from outside Trump Tower as part of her broader campaign pitch.Mr. Rice, by contrast, appeared to grow sharper in his condemnations of the former president in the final stretch of the race.“It’s not about my voting record. It’s not about my support of Trump. It’s not about my ideology. It’s not because this other guy’s any good,” Mr. Rice said. “There’s only one reason why he’s doing this. And it’s just for revenge.”Making that argument proved fruitless for Mr. Rice. On Tuesday, he became the first Republican who voted for impeachment to be defeated in a primary.Republicans win in the Rio Grande Valley and call it a bellwether.Republicans are seeking to make inroads with Hispanic voters this year after doing far better than expected in parts of South Texas in 2020 — and they immediately moved to cast a special election victory in the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday as a bellwether for the region.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      Who Won and Who Lost in Tuesday’s Primary Elections

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      Voters in several states weighed in on key contests in Tuesday’s primaries. Here are some of the most notable wins and losses:South CarolinaRepresentative Tom Rice, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, was defeated by his Trump-backed challenger, State Representative Russell Fry, in the Republican primary in the Seventh Congressional District.Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican, defeated her Trump-endorsed challenger, Katie Arrington, a former state legislator, to win the party’s nomination in the First Congressional District. The race tested whether Republican primary voters prized loyalty to Mr. Trump over concerns that Ms. Arrington wasn’t a strong general election candidate. NevadaIn the state’s G.O.P. Senate primary, Adam Laxalt won his party’s nomination and will face the incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seen as vulnerable this fall. Mr. Laxalt, a former attorney general, was endorsed by Mr. Trump and had helped lead Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election results in Nevada in 2020. Joe Lombardo, the Las Vegas area sheriff who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, won the Republican nomination and will challenge Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, in what is expected to be one of the tightest governor’s races in the country.Jim Marchant, one of the organizers of the “America First” slate of secretary of state candidates who continue to harbor doubts about the 2020 election, won the Republican nomination to be the state’s top election official. He will compete against Cisco Aguilar, a Democratic lawyer who ran uncontested.April Becker, a lawyer and political newcomer, won the Republican nomination in the Third Congressional District and will face Representative Susie Lee, a Democrat.TexasMayra Flores won the special election in the 34th Congressional District, flipping a seat — at least for now — that had long been held by Democrats. She’ll have the seat at least until the end of the year. It was vacated by Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who resigned to take a job with a lobbying firm. Ms. Flores will be the first Republican from the district and the first Latina Republican from Texas in Congress.MaineBruce Poliquin, who used to represent the Second Congressional District, won the Republican nomination for his old seat. He will challenge Representative Jared Golden, one of the country’s most endangered House Democrats, who was uncontested in his primary. More

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      Tom Rice Loses South Carolina Primary to Trump-Backed Rival

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      Representative Tom Rice, a staunch conservative who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump for fomenting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, was defeated Tuesday by a Trump-endorsed primary challenger, the first of the 10 House Republicans who backed impeachment to test the will of the primary voters and lose.Mr. Rice’s loss to State Representative Russell Fry means that half of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach will not return to Congress next year, and that number is likely to grow. In addition to Mr. Rice, four other House Republicans chose to retire rather than face the pro-Trump core of the Republican electorate.Mr. Fry put Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote at the center of his campaign in the conservative Seventh Congressional District, which runs along the North Carolina border to the Atlantic Ocean. And Mr. Trump rallied with Mr. Fry by his side.But Mr. Rice, whose defeat was called by The Associated Press, never shrank from his impeachment vote. “I did it then,” he told The New York Times in an interview last week. “And I will do it tomorrow. And I’ll do it the next day or the day after that. I have a duty to uphold the Constitution. And that is what I did.”Russell Fry at a rally held by former President Donald J. Trump in Florence, S.C., on Sunday.Randall Hill/ReutersMr. Fry called the vote a betrayal, writing on his campaign website, in a reference to the nicknames of the district’s river and coastal regions, “Tom Rice broke the trust of the people of the Pee Dee and Grand Strand when he voted to impeach President Donald Trump.”For all the talk of Mr. Trump’s grip loosening on the party, the defeat of a conservative Republican who almost never strayed from the party orthodoxy will send a message to other Republicans tempted to defy the former president. Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York all retired rather than face the voters after their impeachment decisions.One Republican impeachment voter appears poised to survive the primary season, Representative David Valadao of California, and others will soon be tested: Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Peter Meijer of Michigan and Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, all who face Trump-endorsed Republican challengers.Mr. Rice became an unlikely hero of the anti-Trump movement, a hard-core conservative who was defiant in his contempt for the former president. When Mr. Trump rallied against him in March, he responded with a statement saying, “Trump is here because, like no one else I’ve ever met, he is consumed by spite. I took one vote he didn’t like and now he’s chosen to support a yes-man who has and will bow to anything he says, no matter what.”Maya King More

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      Two Targets of Trump’s Ire Take Different Paths in South Carolina

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      CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a campaign event the weekend before South Carolina’s primary election, Tom Rice, a conservative congressman now on the wrong side of former President Donald J. Trump, offered a confession.“I made my next election a little bit harder than the ones in the past,” he said on Friday, imploring his supporters — a group he called “reasonable, rational folks” and “good, solid mainstream Republicans” — to support him at the polls on Tuesday.Two days before and some 100 miles south, Representative Nancy Mace, another Palmetto State Republican who drew the former president’s ire, recognized her position while knocking doors on a sweltering morning.“I accept everything. I take responsibility. I don’t back down,” she said, confident that voters in her Lowcountry district would be sympathetic. “They know that ‘hey, even if I disagree with her, at least she’s going to tell me where she is,’” she added.Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice are the former president’s two targets for revenge on Tuesday. After a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they were among those who blamed the president for the attack. Ms. Mace, just days into her first term, said that Mr. Trump’s false rhetoric about the presidential election being “stolen” had stoked the riot and threatened her life. Mr. Rice, whose district borders Ms. Mace’s to the north, immediately condemned Mr. Trump and joined nine other Republicans (but not Ms. Mace) in later voting for his impeachment.Now, in the face of primary challenges backed by the former president, the two have taken starkly different approaches to political survival. Ms. Mace has taken the teeth out of her criticisms of Mr. Trump, seeking instead to discuss her conservative voting record and libertarian streak in policy discussions. Mr. Rice, instead, has dug in, defending his impeachment vote and further excoriating Mr. Trump in the process.Should they fend off their primary challengers on Tuesday, Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice will join a growing list of incumbents who have endured the wrath of the G.O.P.’s Trump wing without ending their political careers. Yet their conflicting strategies — a reflection of both their political instincts and the differing politics of their districts — will offer a look at just how far a candidate can go in their defiance of Mr. Trump.Representative Tom Rice at a campaign event in Conway, S.C., last week.Madeline Gray for The New York TimesIn the eyes of her supporters, Ms. Mace’s past comments are less concrete than a vote to impeach. She has aimed to improve her relationship with pro-Trump portions of the G.O.P., spending nearly every day of the past several weeks on the campaign trail to remind voters of her Republican bona fides, not her unfiltered criticism of Mr. Trump.“Everyone knows I was unhappy that day,” she said of Jan. 6. “The entire world knows. All my constituents know.” Her district, which stretches from the left-leaning corners of Charleston to Hilton Head’s conservative country clubs, has an electorate that includes far-right Republicans and liberal Democrats. Ms. Mace has marketed herself not only as a conservative candidate but also one who can defend the politically diverse district against a Democratic rival in November.“It is and always will be a swing district,” she said. “I’m a conservative, but I also understand I don’t represent only conservatives.”That is not a positive message for all in the Lowcountry, however.Ted Huffman, owner of Bluffton BBQ, a restaurant nestled in the heart of Bluffton’s touristy town center, said he was supporting Katie Arrington, the Trump-backed former state representative taking on Ms. Mace. What counted against Ms. Mace was not her feud with Mr. Trump but her relative absence in the restaurant’s part of the district, Mr. Huffman said.“Katie Arrington, she’s been here,” Mr. Huffman said, recalling the few times Ms. Arrington visited Bluffton BBQ. “I’ve never seen Nancy Mace.”During a Summerville event with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, Ms. Mace gave a stump speech that ran down a list of right-wing talking points: high inflation driven by President Biden’s economic agenda, an influx of immigrants at the Southern border, support for military veterans. She did not mention Mr. Trump.Ms. Mace predicts a decisive primary win against Ms. Arrington, who has placed her Trump endorsement at the center of her campaign message. A victory in the face of that, Ms. Mace said, would prove “the weakness of any endorsement.”“Typically I don’t put too much weight into endorsements because they don’t matter,” she said. “It’s really the candidate. It’s the person people are voting for — that’s what matters.”Speaking from her front porch in Moncks Corner, S.C., Deidre Stechmeyer, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mother, said she was not closely following Ms. Mace’s race. But when asked about the congresswoman’s comments condemning the Jan. 6 riot, she shifted.“That’s something that I agree with her on,” she said, adding that she supported Ms. Mace’s decision to certify the Electoral College vote — a move that some in the G.O.P. have pointed to as a definitive betrayal of Mr. Trump. “There was just so much conflict and uncertainty. I feel like it should’ve been certified.”Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote, on the other hand, presents a more identifiable turnabout.It’s part of the reason Ms. Mace has a comfortable lead in her race, according to recent polls, while Mr. Rice faces far more primary challengers and is most likely headed to a runoff with a Trump-endorsed state representative, Russell Fry, after Tuesday.Mr. Fry’s campaign has centered Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote in its message, turning the vote into a referendum on Mr. Rice’s five terms in Congress.“It’s about more than Donald Trump. It’s about an incumbent congressman losing the trust of a very conservative district,” said Matt Moore, former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and an adviser to Mr. Fry’s campaign.Still, Mr. Rice is betting on his hyper-conservative economic record and once-unapologetic support of the former president to win him a sixth term in one of South Carolina’s most pro-Trump congressional districts.A supporter of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event for Representative Nancy Mace on Sunday.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn an interview, Mr. Rice noted the Republican Party’s shift toward pushing social issues over policy — something he said had been driven in part by the former president’s wing of the party, which helped redefine it.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Tom Rice, G.O.P. Congressman Who Voted to Impeach Trump, Stands by His Vote

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      CONWAY, S.C. — Tom Rice, the South Carolina congressman who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6 attacks, has a catchall term to describe the former president’s crusade against him: Trump’s Very Presidential Traveling Revenge Circus.Mr. Trump has made unseating Mr. Rice, a five-term congressman, one of his top priorities in the state’s primary elections on Tuesday. He threw his support in the Republican primary for Mr. Rice’s seat behind State Representative Russell Fry, calling into a rally for Mr. Fry this week and describing Mr. Rice as a “back-stabbing RINO,” the acronym for Republican in name only, a conservative slur.“He lifted up his hand and that was the end of his political career — or we hope it was,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rice’s vote to impeach him.In a 35-minute interview on Friday alongside his wife, Wrenzie, after a barbecue luncheon campaign event, Mr. Rice sounded every bit like a man in the fight for his political life. His campaign is not counting on an outright win against Mr. Fry but is instead bracing for a tough runoff with him.But while some, after crossing Mr. Trump, have tried to salvage their political careers by walking back their comments or retiring from Congress, Mr. Rice has doubled down.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.“To me, his gross failure — his inexcusable failure — was when it started,” Mr. Rice said of the Jan. 6 riot. “He watched it happen. He reveled in it. And he took no action to stop it. I think he had a duty to try to stop it, and he failed in that duty.”Mr. Rice, a pro-business conservative and self-proclaimed Chamber of Commerce Republican, helped craft Mr. Trump’s sweeping new tax code in 2017. Five years after those reforms and 17 months after the Jan. 6 attacks, he argued that the former president had overstayed his welcome in the G.O.P.“He’s the past,” Mr. Rice said of Mr. Trump. “I hope he doesn’t run again. And I think if he does run again, he hurts the Republican Party. We desperately need somebody who’s going to bring people together. And he is not that guy.”Mr. Rice said the Jan. 6 prime-time hearing on Thursday night, which featured footage of the Capitol riots and incriminating testimony from close Trump associates, “puts an exclamation point on what we did,” referring to the 10 House Republicans who backed impeachment.In the days after the riot at the Capitol, Mr. Rice said, he considered voting to impeach Mr. Trump, and spent that Saturday and Sunday in his home congressional district reading the dozens of stories he had asked his staff to send him about the president’s whereabouts on Jan. 6. As he learned of the president’s refusal to stop the attack, he became incensed. When it came time for his vote, he said he had “zero question in my mind” about whether Mr. Trump should be held accountable.“I did it then,” he said. “And I will do it tomorrow. And I’ll do it the next day or the day after that. I have a duty to uphold the Constitution. And that is what I did.”Mr. Rice did not vote to certify the election, however, saying he had become concerned about ballot discrepancies in Pennsylvania that were outlined in a letter to House Republican leadership.During a House Republican meeting one month after the Capitol riots, he defended Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach and criticized Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, for his continued embrace of the former president, according to audio from the exchange.“Kevin went to Mar-a-Lago this weekend, shook his hand, took a picture and set up Trumpmajority.com. Personally, I find that offensive,” Mr. Rice said at the time.In the months following the vote, Mr. Rice has been made a pariah among those in Mr. Trump’s circle, as has his wife. “I don’t feel like I fit in with that group anymore,” Ms. Rice said on Friday, referring to the Republican base.Mr. Trump’s efforts to sway Republican primary voters and disparage Mr. Rice have left the congressman both frustrated and puzzled. He has come to view them as a political stunt.“Bring on the circus,” he said of Mr. Trump’s involvement in the primary. “You know, some people are afraid of clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns.”Jonathan Martin More

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      Jan. 6 Inquiry Votes Aren’t Costing G.O.P. Incumbents in Primaries, Yet

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      When 35 Republicans defied Donald J. Trump to vote in favor of an independent, bipartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, they immediately braced for backlash from the former president’s most loyal voters.But it hasn’t quite hit as hard as expected — at least not yet.Only one of the 35 has lost a primary challenge, while least 10 of the 13 incumbents in contested races had survived primary challenges as of Wednesday. (Nine of the 35 who voted for the panel opted to retire or have resigned.)The fate of two incumbents whose races had elections on Tuesday still has not been determined, with Representative David Valadao of California expected to advance to the November election after appearing to finish second in Tuesday’s open primary and Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi being pushed into a June 28 runoff after narrowly trailing Michael Cassidy.The lone casualty so far has been Representative David McKinley of West Virginia, who lost a May primary to Representative Alex Mooney, a Republican colleague who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump in the newly drawn Second District. Their districts were consolidated after West Virginia lost a seat in the House because of the state’s declining population.There are plenty of high-profile opportunities for Mr. Trump in the months ahead to settle scores with Republicans who voted for the plan to form the independent commission, a proposal that ultimately died in the Senate. A House committee that is investigating the riot at the Capitol will hold a televised hearing in prime time on Thursday.Here are some key races involving Republicans who voted for a commission:In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney was ousted last year from her House leadership post and punished by Republicans in her home state after voting to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Capitol attack. She will face Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed challenger, in an Aug. 16 primary that is drawing national attention.In South Carolina, Representative Tom Rice is fighting for his survival in a seven-way primary that features Russell Fry, a state legislator who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Rice also voted for impeachment and said he was willing to stake his political career on that position.In Michigan, where Mr. Trump’s attempts to domineer the Republican Party have encountered some notable setbacks, Representative Peter Meijer has drawn the wrath of the former president. Calling Mr. Meijer a “RINO” — a Republican in name only — Mr. Trump endorsed John Gibbs, the conservative challenger to Mr. Meijer in the Aug. 2 primary.As a result of redistricting in Illinois, Representative Rodney Davis is locked in a primary battle with Representative Mary Miller, a House colleague who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump. The primary is June 28. Ms. Miller was one of 175 Republicans who voted against the commission in the House, which is controlled by Democrats.In Florida, the pro-Trump America First political committee named Representative Carlos Gimenez as its “top target for removal from Congress.” Mr. Gimenez will face two challengers in the Aug. 23 primary, including Ruth Swanson, who has said that the 2020 election was “thrown” and has contributed campaign funds to Project Veritas, the conservative group. More

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      In South Carolina, Nikki Haley Finds Some Distance from Trump

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      Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, used a well-timed endorsement of Representative Nancy Mace to get on the opposite side of the former president.WASHINGTON — Rumors were swirling in South Carolina early this February that Donald J. Trump would try to tear down a Republican congresswoman who had incurred his wrath.Then Nikki Haley, his former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina’s former governor, made her move.On Feb. 7, Ms. Haley endorsed the congresswoman, Representative Nancy Mace, jumping ahead of Mr. Trump, who backed Ms. Mace’s rival two days later. The timing of Ms. Haley’s move was widely viewed as deliberate — allowing her to exert her influence in the race without directly challenging Mr. Trump’s judgment.“Nikki’s very smart — it’d never occur to me that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing,” said South Carolina’s treasurer, Curtis Loftis. “If the political winds change for President Trump, she’s prepared to be there, and this is part of that.”Mr. Trump will be in Florence, S.C., on Saturday to rally his faithful behind Ms. Mace’s primary challenger, Katie Arrington, and another pro-Trump Republican, Russell Fry, who is challenging Representative Tom Rice, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Mr. Fry and Ms. Arrington will share the stage, along with several conservative luminaries, including Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Drew McKissick, the state’s Republican Party chairman. Ms. Haley will not be there.To Republicans in the state, Ms. Haley is playing a shrewd and careful game by seeming to distance herself from Mr. Trump and yet continuing to embrace him at the same time.Just after the attack on the Capitol last year, Ms. Haley pronounced herself “disgusted” with her former boss, but since then, she has been trying to get back in his good graces. She has been appearing on television to say that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, would have never invaded Ukraine if Mr. Trump were still president. She has endorsed and raised funds for many pro-Trump candidates, while staying out of some of the races where he has endorsed challengers.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.But in the case of Ms. Mace, backing her early on was a way for Ms. Haley to get on the right side of Republican politics in her home state, in case Mr. Trump’s endorsements falter — and he falters with them. In South Carolina, where the former governor remains popular, the state’s early primary has often been decisive to presidential nominations; Ms. Haley and other Republicans in Mr. Trump’s shadow are positioning for possible presidential bids in 2024.“South Carolina is a hugely influential political state,” said Matt Moore, a Republican campaign consultant and former party chairman in the state. “The stakes are high, and the foundations are being set for the next decade. You want to have folks on your team.”In her first speech in Congress, Representative Nancy Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, but she voted against Mr. Trump’s impeachment.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Haley declined to be interviewed. But her aides said her endorsement of Ms. Mace had nothing to do with rumors of a pending endorsement for Ms. Arrington from Mr. Trump.“Ambassador Haley’s endorsement of Congresswoman Mace was based entirely on her record as a tough-as-nails conservative on national security, the border, law enforcement and opposing mandates on our kids,” Chaney Denton, a Haley spokeswoman, said.Ms. Haley is not shying away now. She headlined a fund-raiser Friday afternoon for Ms. Mace at The Harbour Club in Charleston, S.C., that raised around $300,000 as Mr. Trump’s forces gathered upstate.“Jumping in the middle of this and holding a fund-raiser when President Trump is coming down here? That isn’t keeping your powder dry. That’s loading up your gun,” said Katon Dawson, a former Republican Party chairman in South Carolina.Mr. Trump has endorsed only eight Republican challengers to sitting House Republicans, and two of them are in South Carolina. Ms. Mace, a freshman who made her name as the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, is unlike most of Mr. Trump’s incumbent targets.In her first speech in Congress in January 2021, Ms. Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack, but she voted against his impeachment. She also opposed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, another vote that Mr. Trump has used to determine his endorsements.But Ms. Mace has been steadfast in saying that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election. When he endorsed Ms. Arrington, Mr. Trump declared Ms. Mace “an absolutely terrible candidate” whose “remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party to which she has been very disloyal.”Representative Katie Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the 2018 Republican primary, after she ran with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Kathryn Ziesig/The Post And Courier, via Associated PressRussell Fry, a state representative, is challenging U.S. Representative Tom Rice, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump is backing Mr. Fry in the primary.Jeffrey Collins/Associated PressMs. Mace then appeared in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan to praise the former president’s record and policies, saying, “If you want to lose this seat once again in a midterm election cycle to Democrats, then my opponent is more than qualified to do just that.”Mr. Trump will not be assuaged. On Friday, he said in a statement he “will be honoring Katie Arrington, who is running against the absolutely horrendous Nancy Mace,” predicting “big crowds at the Florence Regional Airport.”Ms. Mace, though, might have a point. In 2018, Ms. Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the Republican primary after he emerged as one of the few anti-Trump Republicans in Congress. But Ms. Arrington then lost to a Democrat, Joe Cunningham. In 2020, Mr. Cunningham then lost to Ms. Mace.Further complicating matters, Ms. Arrington, the chief information security officer for acquisition and sustainment at the Department of Defense, was placed on leave last June over a suspected leak of classified information from the National Security Agency, a situation that has not gone unnoticed by Ms. Mace’s campaign.Republican officials in South Carolina said Ms. Arrington may have tipped Ms. Haley off about jumping into the primary race. Ms. Arrington was among a small group of South Carolina Republicans who visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago the weekend of Feb. 5. When she heard he was going to endorse Mr. Fry, she began letting Republicans know widely that she, too, would be entering a race, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Ms. Haley endorsed Ms. Mace on Feb. 7. Ms. Arrington announced her primary challenge on Feb. 8. Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Arrington on Feb. 9.Ms. Haley is no Trump foe. Most of her endorsements have gone to Trump-favored candidates. She endorsed on Thursday the re-election of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, and cut a fund-raising video with Herschel Walker, the former football star recruited by Mr. Trump to run for the Senate in Georgia.She pointedly has not endorsed Mr. Rice for re-election. Mr. Dawson, the former state party chairman, said Ms. Haley’s campaigning for Mr. Rice in 2012 made all the difference in his victory over the former lieutenant governor, André Bauer, in the Republican primary. But Mr. Rice’s district on the North Carolina border is far more Trump country than Ms. Mace’s affluent, highly educated district that touches Charleston and hugs the Lowcountry coast.Ms. Arrington is still talking confidently.“The Lowcountry wants a pro-Trump America First conservative to represent them,” her spokesman, Chris D’Anna, said. “Nancy knows that, indicated by her tucking her tail between her legs as she flew to New York City to shoot an apology video in front of Trump Tower.”Austin McCubbin, Ms. Mace’s campaign manager, responded, “Our opponent has proven two things — she’s the only Republican to lose this district in 40 years, and she will say just about anything.”Mr. Sanford, the former congressman whom Ms. Arrington defeated in 2018, said Ms. Haley had nothing to lose. Once Ms. Haley expressed her anger over Jan. 6, she would never get back in his good graces, he said, speaking from experience.“There’s really no way forward for her,” Mr. Sanford said of Ms. Haley. “Trump is a guy who holds decided grudges and doesn’t let them go. She doesn’t want to do anything to alienate his base, but where she can find things that appeal to that mass of Republicans that don’t feel they have a home, she’ll grab it.” More