3.5 – US democracy and participation
On 19 May 2026, the seven-term Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie lost his primary to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL hand-picked and endorsed by President Trump. The Associated Press called the race within two hours of polls closing, with Gallrein ahead by nearly nine points. It was the most expensive House primary in American history, drawing over $32 million in advertising spending. Massie had represented Kentucky’s fourth district since 2012 and was widely seen as one of the few Republicans willing to break publicly with the President. He led the bipartisan push to release the Epstein files, voted against Trump’s signature tax and spending package, and opposed the war in Iran.
The result is part of a much wider pattern. Days earlier, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, lost his own primary. In Indiana, almost every state Republican who opposed Trump’s mid-cycle redistricting push was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger. The Massie race attracted unusually heavy outside spending, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel groups contributing close to $9.4 million in support of Gallrein, largely in response to Massie’s repeated votes against aid to Israel. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even travelled to the district to campaign against him.
American primaries are open contests in which registered party voters choose the nominee. Unlike British party selection, which is internal, this gives an outside actor with money or presidential authority enormous power to reshape the parliamentary party from below. Incumbency is normally a powerful protection. House incumbents win their primaries over 90 per cent of the time. What Trump has shown, and what Massie’s defeat confirms, is that a sitting president with a loyal base, a willing donor network and a permissive system of campaign finance can override that advantage. The Citizens United ruling, by allowing unlimited outside spending through Super PACs, made this kind of intervention possible.
What this episode reveals is the deepening of partisan polarisation as a structural feature of the US system, and the collapse of the space inside the Republican Party for dissent from its dominant faction. The primary, originally designed to democratise candidate selection and weaken party bosses, has become a tool of presidential party discipline. As Massie himself warned in his concession, a legislature that always votes with the president is not a legislature. The mechanism designed to liberate voters from party machines is now being used to stop Congress pushing back.