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      Nancy Mace Holds Off a Trump-Endorsed Challenger in South Carolina

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      CHARLESTON, S.C. — Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican who clashed with former President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack, fended off a primary challenge on Tuesday from Katie Arrington, a former state representative who had Mr. Trump’s backing. The race was called by The Associated Press.Ms. Mace played up her background as a onetime Waffle House waitress and the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. Billing herself as a “new voice” for the Republican Party, Ms. Mace, 44, championed a range of issues in Congress, including veterans’ rights and marijuana legalization. Her Lowcountry district, which stretches along South Carolina’s southeastern coast from Charleston to just beyond Hilton Head Island, favors Republicans.Ms. Mace drew Mr. Trump’s ire a few days into her first term after she condemned his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His false claims about the election being stolen, she said in interviews, contributed to the riots and “wiped out” the Trump administration’s accomplishments.Mr. Trump subsequently labeled Ms. Mace a “RINO,” a pejorative acronym meaning Republican in name only, and endorsed Ms. Arrington.In an effort to re-enter his good graces, Ms. Mace traveled to New York in February to film a video in front of Trump Tower that promoted her loyalty to the former president.But Mr. Trump did not heed her entreaties. He headlined a rally weeks later for Ms. Arrington and State Representative Russell Fry, who is challenging another South Carolina representative, Tom Rice. Mr. Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot.Mr. Trump heavily criticized Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice throughout the primary campaign. Last week, he hosted a tele-rally for his two favored candidates, underlining Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice’s perceived disloyalties.Even so, Ms. Mace raised more money than Ms. Arrington by a 2-to-1 margin and outspent her by more than $300,000 on the airwaves, according to the political spending tracker AdImpact. She courted the district’s most influential political and business leaders and, in the race’s final days, campaigned alongside a number of high-profile figures on the right, including a former Trump White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and former Gov. Nikki Haley. Ms. Mace will face the Democratic nominee, Annie Andrews, in November. More

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      South Carolina Third Congressional District Primary Election Results 2022

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      Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Alana Celii, Lalena Fisher, Trip Gabriel, Maya King, Alyce McFadden, Jennifer Medina and Karen Workman; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. 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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      What to Watch in Tuesday’s Primary Elections

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      The marquee races on Tuesday are taking place in South Carolina, where two Republican House members are facing Trump-backed challengers, and in Nevada, where Republicans are aiming to sweep a host of Democratic-held seats in the November general election.Voters in Maine and North Dakota will also go to the polls, and in Texas, Republicans hope to grab the Rio Grande Valley seat of Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who resigned in March.The primary season has had more extensive Election Days, but Tuesday has plenty of drama. Here is what to watch.In South Carolina, a showdown with TrumpRepresentatives Tom Rice and Nancy Mace crossed former President Donald J. Trump in the opening days of 2021 as the cleanup crews were still clearing debris from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Mr. Rice was perhaps the biggest surprise vote in favor of impeachment — as a conservative in a very conservative district, he was risking his political career.Ms. Mace voted against impeachment, but in her first speech in Congress that January, she said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack.So Mr. Trump backed two primary challengers: State Representative Russell Fry against Mr. Rice, and the conservative Katie Arrington against Ms. Mace.Representative Tom Rice speaking with supporters in Conway, S.C., last week.Madeline Gray for The New York TimesIn Ms. Mace’s case, the Trump world is divided. Mr. Trump’s first United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, and one of his chiefs of staff, Mick Mulvaney, both South Carolinians, are backing the incumbent freshman.That is, in part, because Ms. Arrington has a poor track record: In 2018, after beating then-Representative Mark Sanford in the Republican primary after he castigated Mr. Trump, she then lost in November to a Democrat, Joe Cunningham. (Mr. Cunningham, who was defeated by Ms. Mace in 2020, is hoping for a comeback this year with a long-shot bid to defeat the incumbent governor, Henry McMaster.)Republicans worry that an Arrington victory on Tuesday could jeopardize the seat, which stretches from Charleston down the affluent South Carolina coast.Mr. Rice’s path to victory on Tuesday will be considerably harder, but he remains defiant about his impeachment vote. “Defending the Constitution is a bedrock of the Republican platform. Defend the Constitution, and that’s what I did. That was the conservative vote,” he said in a June 5 interview on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “There’s no question in my mind.”Battleground NevadaCalifornia may have a larger number of seats in play, but no state is as thoroughly up for grabs as Nevada. Three out of four of the state’s House seats are rated tossups — all three of which are now held by Democrats. Other tossup races include the Senate seat held by Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, and the governorship held by Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat. A Republican sweep would do real damage, not only to the Democrats’ narrow hold on Congress, but also to their chances in the 2024 presidential election if Nevada is close: It’s better to have the governor of a state on your side than on the other side.But first, Republican voters need to sort through a vast array of candidates vying for each position. Joe Lombardo, the sheriff of Las Vegas’s Clark County, is the favorite for the Republican nomination to challenge Mr. Sisolak. He has Mr. Trump’s endorsement and echoes Mr. Trump’s language in his pledge to “take our state back.”Eight candidates are vying to challenge Ms. Cortez Masto, but Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada attorney general who lost to Mr. Sisolak in 2018, is clearly favored.Adam Laxalt, a Republican Senate candidate, with supporters in Moapa Valley, Nev., last week.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesRepresentative Dina Titus, a Democrat, also has eight Republicans competing to challenge her, including a former House member, Cresent Hardy. But it’s Carolina Serrano, a Colombian American immigrant, who has the backing of Republican leaders and the Trump world alike, with endorsements from Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the party’s No. 3 House leader, as well as Mr. Laxalt and Richard Grenell, a pugilistic former national security official in the Trump administration.Five Republicans hope to challenge Representative Susie Lee, a Democrat. Among them, April Becker, a real estate lawyer, has raised the most money by far and has the backing of the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, as well as Ms. Stefanik, Ms. Haley and Mr. Laxalt.The potential G.O.P. challengers to Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat, are most clearly divided between the Trump fringe and the party’s mainstream. Sam Peters, an insurance agent, is backed by the far-right Arizona congressmen Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, who both have been tied to extremist groups, as well as the right-wing rocker Ted Nugent. Annie Black, an assemblywoman running in the primary against Mr. Peters, is more mainstream.A harbinger brewing in South TexasWhen Mr. Vela decided to resign from the House instead of serving out the rest of his term, he most likely did not know the stakes he was creating for the special election to fill his seat for the remaining months of this year.Republicans are trying to make a statement, pouring money into the traditionally Democratic Rio Grande Valley district to support Mayra Flores. She has raised 16 times the amount logged by her closest Democratic competitor, Dan Sanchez.A campaign sign for Mayra Flores in Brownsville during the Texas primary in March.Denise Cathey/The Brownsville Herald, via Associated PressA Flores victory would be proclaimed by Republicans as a sign of worse to come for Democrats in November.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      South Carolina Primary Guide: How to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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      Not sure if you can vote? Or where? We’ve got you covered. Here is a handy, last-minute guide to voting in South Carolina.How to votePolls close in South Carolina at 7 p.m. Eastern time. People who are in line at their polling location at that time will be allowed to vote.The deadline to register to vote is at least 30 days before any election. Not sure if you’re registered? You can check on this page, with your name, date of birth and part of your Social Security number.If you used an absentee ballot, you can track its status here. Want to use an absentee ballot in the future? Here are the guidelines.Where to voteYou can find polling places near you on this site (it’s the same as where you check your voter registration status).According to the South Carolina secretary of state’s website, absentee ballots must be received by the county voter registration office by 7 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day.What’s on the ballotThere are a number of races for statewide office, as well as many local contests. You’ll be asked to make your pick for governor and House races, among others.Find a personalized sample ballot on this site. 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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      ‘I’m not afraid of clowns’: Republican defends vote to impeach Trump

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      ‘I’m not afraid of clowns’: Republican defends vote to impeach TrumpTom Rice of South Carolina says of his vote to impeach ‘I have a duty to uphold the constitution’ as he faces tough primary One of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump over the deadly Capitol attack insisted the former president should be consigned to the political past, even as Trump attracted headlines with a Senate race endorsement, in his continued attempt to control the GOP.The January 6 panel said Trump incited an ‘attempted coup’. Will it kill him or make him stronger? Read more“Bring on the circus,” Tom Rice of South Carolina told the New York Times. “You know, some people are afraid of clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns.“He’s the past. 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.”Trump this week called Rice a “backstabbing Rino” – an acronym for “Republican in Name Only” – and said: “He lifted up his hand and that was the end of his political career – or we hope it was.”Rice and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol, an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory which a bipartisan Senate committee linked to seven deaths.Trump was acquitted when only seven Republican senators found him guilty, remaining free to run for the White House again. He has strongly suggested he will.On Thursday night, the House committee investigating the January 6 riot staged a public hearing broadcast on TV. Twenty million Americans saw the dramatic presentation, marshaled by Liz Cheney of Wyoming, another anti-Trump Republican, of evidence and testimony meant to show Trump caused the attack.Rice told the Times: “To me, his gross failure – his inexcusable failure – was when it started. 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.”Of his vote to impeach, he said: “I did it then. 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.”Rice faces a tough primary against Russell Fry, a state representative endorsed by Trump.The matter of Trump’s endorsement has dominated a Senate primary in another southern state, Alabama. On Friday, Trump endorsed Katie Britt, confirming his decision to un-endorse his previous choice, Mo Brooks, a congressman deeply involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.Britt was chief of staff to the retiring Republican senator, Richard Shelby. On Friday, Trump called her “an incredible fighter for the people of Alabama”. That was another blow to Brooks, who sought to regain Trump’s endorsement after it was withdrawn in March.“Mo has been wanting it back ever since,” Trump said, “but I cannot give it to him! Katie Britt, on the other hand, is a fearless America First Warrior.”Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails showRead moreBrooks has continued to campaign under the label of “Maga Mo”, a reference to Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan.On 6 January 2021, Brooks addressed a rally near the White House before Trump spoke. Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat, which according to his “big lie” was caused by electoral fraud. The Capitol attack ensued.Withdrawing his endorsement of Brooks, Trump accused the far-right congressman of going “woke” – for saying it was time to move on from litigating the 2020 election.On Friday, Brooks said: “Let’s just admit it: Trump endorses the wrong people sometimes.” TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpSouth CarolinaUS politicsTrump impeachment (2021)newsReuse this content 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