Steve King, House Republican With a History of Racist Remarks, Loses Primary – The New York Times

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The loss was most likely the final political blow to one of the nations most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

In interviews over the years, voters in Iowas most conservative region downplayed Mr. Kings incendiary comments. His loss after 18 years in office was mainly because opponents painted him as ineffective after party leaders in Congress stripped him of his committee assignments last year.

That move came after comments that Mr. King made in an interview with The New York Times in 2019, in which he asked, White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization how did that language become offensive?

The remarks caused an uproar. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, told Mr. King to find another line of work.

Instead, Mr. King clung to his seat, claiming to be the victim of Republican insiders and of the news media.

Now Mr. Feenstra, a political and social conservative in a deep-red district in northwest Iowa, is the odds-on favorite to hold the seat against J.D. Scholten, who nearly defeated Mr. King two years ago and ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.

The belief that Mr. King, who had crushed earlier primary opponents, was vulnerable this year drew four challengers, including Mr. Feenstra; Jeremy Taylor, a former state lawmaker; and two businessmen, Bret Richards and Steve Reeder. All four opponents campaigned as equally conservative as Mr. King on red-meat issues like abortion and gun rights, but they promised more effective representation of the district after Mr. King lost his committee assignments.

Our Fourth District desperately needs a seat at the table, Mr. Feenstra said at a debate last month, calling for the district to have an effective conservative voice.

Although there was a question of whether the four challengers would split voters opposed to Mr. King too many ways and allow him to skate through, Mr. Feenstras margin was decisive, 46 percent to 36 percent for Mr. King.

In comments Mr. King recorded on Facebook after his loss, he said none of his challengers had taken issue with a single statement that I have made during his career, and he urged Iowans to continue to teach our children well about values we care about, including opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

His defeat, he said, was the result of an effort to push out the strongest voice for full-spectrum constitutional, Christian conservatism in Congress.

Mr. Feenstra promised during the campaign to be an unflagging social and fiscal conservative in Congress. Ill fight with President Trump to build the wall, he said at a candidate forum, boasting that he had voted in the Iowa Senate to ban sanctuary cities and defund Planned Parenthood. As a lawmaker, he co-sponsored a bill to define life as beginning at conception. He ran on his support of Iowas largest tax cut in history, in 2018, which a state Department of Revenue analysis showed aimed the highest benefits to the wealthy.

Mr. Feenstra was the preferred candidate of establishment Republicans, and he easily outraised Mr. King, bringing in $925,800 to Mr. Kings $331,000. He won endorsements from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Right to Life Committee. And in an extraordinary rebuke of Mr. King by House colleagues, five Republican congressmen donated to Mr. Feenstras campaign.

Anticipating the general election, Mr. Scholten on Wednesday indicated he would run a populist campaign around economic issues, while accusing Mr. Feenstra of siding with corporate donors. Not being Steve King isnt enough for this district, he said. It wont be enough to revitalize rural communities, ensure farmers get a fair price and can stay on their land, or for families to afford health care and save for retirement. We need someone with vision and the ability to bring people together. Thats not Feenstra.

During the primary, Mr. Feenstra refrained from attacking Mr. Kings years of demeaning comments about immigrants he once compared Dreamers to drug mules with calves the size of cantaloupes and instead portrayed the congressman as powerless to help Iowans.

Mr. King, 71, claimed during the campaign that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, had privately pledged to help him regain his committee assignments. But Mr. McCarthy denied having said any such thing, adding that if the Republican Steering Committee, which decides on committee roles, met again to weigh in on Mr. King, he would not win back his posts.

Even before facing Republican discipline in the House in January 2019 after the Times interview, Mr. King was in electoral trouble. He just barely won re-election in 2018 over Mr. Scholten, a former professional baseball player, by three percentage points in a district Mr. Trump carried by nearly 30 points.

Just before that election, the head of the Republican House campaign arm, Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, denounced Mr. King for his endorsement of the Toronto mayoral candidate, Faith Goldy, who has espoused white nationalism, and for comments seeming to embrace the Great Replacement, a far-right conspiracy theory. We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior, Mr. Stivers said at the time.

A paradox of Mr. Kings career is that, in his anti-immigrant language and policies, he was years ahead of Mr. Trump, who won the presidency by stirring fears about nonwhite immigrants.

Well before Mr. Trump promised to build a wall on the southwest border, Mr. King, who founded an earth-moving company, stood on the House floor and showed off a model of a 12-foot border wall of his own design.

Soon after Mr. Trump took office, he invited Mr. King who even then was snubbed by establishment Republicans like the former House speaker John A. Boehner to the Oval Office. The president boasted to Mr. King of having supported him, and raised money for him during an Iowa visit in 2014, Mr. King told The Times.

In the past, Mr. King routinely won the backing of other Iowa Republicans, including Gov. Kim Reynolds, who named him a co-chair of her 2018 election campaign. He sought to be a kingmaker in presidential politics given Iowas early-voting role. In 2015 he played host to a forum for 2016 hopefuls, including Mr. Trump, who attacked Jeb Bush for saying that immigrants enter the United States in an act of love.

Say what? Mr. Trump said. Half of them are criminals!

For two decades Steve King has been something of the sun in the political universe around here, Douglas Burns, an owner of newspapers in Mr. Kings district, said on Tuesday night. Ill still have to see the eclipse tomorrow to believe these results.

Read the rest here:

Steve King, House Republican With a History of Racist Remarks, Loses Primary - The New York Times