GOP navigates primary minefield as it tries to secure House control

Super Tuesday boosted Republicans’ hopes of keeping the House majority.

It also inflamed their fears of being unable to actually control it.

Party leaders have worked overtime to elevate electable candidates across key swing seats. Thanks to that maneuvering, those contenders are now well-positioned for November. But Tuesday’s races also saw far-right candidates prevail in deep-red seats in Texas and North Carolina — despite spending to stop them — deepening concerns that the House's disorder and dysfunction of the past year will only intensify.

The tension between the success of the battleground strategy and the hand-wringing over the safe-seat outcomes was on full display this week.

National Republicans successfully blocked Sandy Smith, a repeat candidate with a litany of abuse allegations, from winning the nomination in a North Carolina swing seat. In California, a barrage of spending by a top GOP super PAC appears to have helped Rep. David Valadao, who is likely the only Republican able to hold his Democratic-leaning central California battleground. Meanwhile, Ohio Republican JR Majewski, who lost a 2022 bid after he was accused of misrepresenting his military service, formally ended his comeback bid on Wednesday after careful maneuvering by House GOP leaders to nudge him out.

It’s a much-needed course correction for a party that saw a slew of controversial nominees blow crucial races in the midterms, leaving them with a precariously small majority.

“We learned last cycle your primary should be about who can win in the general," said GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who has held an Omaha-based swing seat since 2017 and faces his own potentially challenging primary later this spring. "Why elect someone who can’t win in the general?"

But the conference also appears set to inch further right through safe-seat primaries, underscoring an emerging new reality in Republican politics: It’s becoming harder each year for party strategists to persuade voters not to elevate the most extreme candidate.

Brandon Gill, a 30-year-old candidate who helped market his father-in-law Dinesh D’Souza’s conspiracy theory documentary, won an open safe seat in northeast Texas on Tuesday. Mark Harris, the pastor whose apparent 2018 victory was tossed out after voter fraud allegations, won in North Carolina. Rep. Barry Moore, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, bested the more moderate Rep. Jerry Carl in an Alabama member-on-member matchup created by redistricting.

And Rep. Tony Gonzales — who was censured by Texas Republicans for bucking the party line on gun control and border security — failed to avoid a runoff in his sprawling West Texas district. He will face Brandon Herrera, a firearms manufacturer known as “The AK Guy” who runs a pro-gun YouTube channel and has said he would have voted to oust Kevin McCarthy. That has spurred worry that the House could prove just as unwieldy next year, if not worse. Rogue members could grind the legislative agenda to a halt or oust a speaker, as eight of them did to McCarthy.

“That really proved that we do need to have the right people in these seats,” said Sarah Chamberlain, the president of the pragmatic Republican Main Street Partnership. “That's extremely important, probably more so than ever. We have to have a functioning government.”

Fights over the direction of the party are not new, but they intensified after the 2022 midterms, when baggage-laden candidates — many of them MAGA-aligned and seizing on former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a rigged 2020 election — led to a smaller-than-expected Republican majority in the House.

Republican strategists are determined not to let it happen again. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the top House GOP super PAC, which is aligned with Speaker Mike Johnson, has made boosting top-tier battleground candidates a priority — despite some pushback and tense exchanges behind closed doors.

CLF President Dan Conston was giving a political briefing to members in February at a Miami retreat when he was asked a question by House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Va.). Good wanted to know why the group was spending to block a conservative candidate like Smith in North Carolina, according to two people who witnessed the exchange.

Smith could not win a general election, Conston replied, noting the list of domestic abuse allegations against her. (Among them: menacing her ex-husband with a frying pan and threatening to run him over with her car.) She also had a bad electoral track record: She already lost to Democratic Rep. Don Davis in 2022.

CLF’s gambit was ultimately successful. Retired Army Col. Laurie Buckhout, seen by GOP leadership as a far stronger candidate to take out Davis this year, edged out Smith on Tuesday night for the Republican nomination.

It was just one of several races where House Republicans have forcefully waded into GOP primaries to block problematic candidates from threatening their chances in crucial battlegrounds.

In California, Republicans fretted that Valadao would get shut out of the 22nd District — either getting overtaken by Chris Mathys, who was running to his right, or if two Democrats prevailed in the primary.

CLF polled multiple times in Valadao’s district to monitor his prospects, according to a person familiar with the data. In early February a survey showed, among voters in the district who identified as conservatives, Mathys had inched in front of the incumbent by 3 points. The group quickly dropped $1 million on ads. When it polled again a few weeks later, Valadao led 53 percent to 28 percent among conservative voters.

The race has not yet been called, but as of Thursday afternoon, Valadao remained the top vote-getter with 12 points between him and Mathys, who is in third place.

“It was a great night for the majority,” Conston said. “Getting David Valadao again is the key to us holding that seat. We’re writing the seat off otherwise.”

CLF strictly limits its involvement in primaries to swing seats that will build the majority, per its pact with the anti-tax Club for Growth. But as establishment fears mounted over troublesome candidates in deep-red seats, intervention there fell to two newly formed super PACs, backed by GOP megadonors.

Those groups — Conservatives for American Excellence, bankrolled by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin and investment banker Warren Stephens, and America Leads Action, backed by wealthy donors Jay Faison and Rob Walton — spent a combined $6 million ahead of Super Tuesday in Alabama, North Carolina and Texas to block those candidates.

They had mixed results.

Gill, D'Souza's son-in-law, had a more than 40-point margin over the runner-up. Harris avoided a runoff and secured the nomination outright for the safe seat. Moore pulled off a surprising win in the newly drawn Alabama district. All three had the backing of the House Freedom Caucus’ political arm.

But the establishment forces did manage to thwart Bo Hines, a repeat candidate who lost a swing seat general election during the midterms, in North Carolina.

The Club for Growth, a powerful conservative group, backed several of the candidates, including Gill, Moore and Hines. David McIntosh, the group’s president, said Republican primary voters want hard-liners. Working with Democrats, he noted, is the move that ultimately doomed McCarthy’s speakership.

“I noticed that Mark Harris used these attacks as proof with the base that he was going to go fight the liberal establishment in Washington,” McIntosh said. “In some ways, it's creating this boomerang effect and helping the conservatives prove their bona fides.”

He said he planned to reach out to people behind the two super PACs and urge them to “stop wasting your money.” He hopes they’ll join CLF in staying out of open safe-seat primaries.

But for now, the tension remains.

Establishment Republicans will have another shot to get their preferred candidates in two Texas districts that are headed to runoffs. Conservatives for American Excellence has spent against John O’Shea, a far-right candidate running for the open seat in Texas’ ruby-red 12th District who is facing the more moderate state Rep. Craig Goldman.

And Gonzales will almost certainly need help if he is to defeat Herrera, who will now have the opportunity to consolidate the anti-incumbent voters in a lower-turnout, one-on-one matchup in late May. 

“Texas 23 is the toughest district in America,” said Gonzales, who expressed confidence in his runoff chances. “I'm going to make the case for all the things that I've done in my time in office these three years.”

The next safe-seat test will come March 19 in Illinois, when Rep. Mike Bost faces a far-right primary challenge from Darren Bailey, a 2022 gubernatorial candidate backed by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). Bost, a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership, has touted his willingness to find solutions and legislate and cast Bailey as a rabble-rouser.

“We need people to govern,” Bost said.

Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.