If President Donald Trump’s top political priority next year is Republicans retaining control of Congress, his second-highest goal may be the defeat of his foremost GOP irritant: Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky).
Yet Massie, a libertarian-flavored iconoclast who’s now pushing for the release of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case, has breezed through past primaries — and Trump’s lieutenants have yet to find a formidable challenger ahead of next year’s contest.
That could change in the coming weeks, however.
High-level Republican officials are discussing an effort to nudge former state attorney general Daniel Cameron to drop his Senate bid and switch to challenge Massie in what may be the highest-profile House primary in the country next year.
Cameron already lives in the district, previously won Trump’s support in his unsuccessful bid for governor two years ago and would have access to a near-bottomless supply of campaign funds provided by Trump’s allies.
It may be hard to lure Cameron away from a statewide bid for a primary against a wily House incumbent, but the 39-year-old protégé of Sen. Mitch McConnell has struggled to raise cash in his Senate bid. This has prompted some Kentucky political veterans to believe he may be lured from the primary to succeed McConnell over to the Massie race later this fall, once third-quarter fundraising reports are made public.
For now, Cameron is batting down the idea of a switch.
“I’m staying in the Senate race,” Cameron told me. “I’m still leading in all the polling and will continue to do so.”
And he made it clear he’s not been approached to make the switch. “This is the first time I’ve heard this chatter.”
And yet there’d be good reason for him to make the jump. It’s not just his paltry fundraising — should Trump embrace the idea and directly urge Cameron to challenge Massie, it could be difficult for the onetime up-and-comer to say no, given the president’s clout within the party.
Trump, however, may require some lobbying from his lieutenants to embrace Cameron once more. The president, I’m told, is still irritated at Cameron for losing his 2023 race against Gov. Andy Beshear and laments to anybody who will listen that Cameron was defined as too extreme on abortion. Beshear prevailed by five points in an otherwise deep red state in part because of his ad campaign linking Cameron to Kentucky’s strict abortion law.
Those who’ve heard Trump’s gripe about Cameron’s refusal to support abortion exceptions for rape and incest include a Kentucky state senator, Aaron Reed, who recently met with the president about entering the primary against Massie. However, Trump did not come away totally convinced that Reed, a deeply conservative former Navy SEAL, is the answer, according to Republicans familiar with the meeting. The reason? He also sounded, to Trump’s ear, too extreme on abortion.
Massie, first elected in 2012, has not had a political scare despite his willingness to buck his party’s leadership. But he also hasn’t been as bold as he has this year, when he’s openly defied House Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump — both in word and deed.
Massie was one of only two House Republicans — and the only one in a safe conservative seat — to oppose the so-called Big Beautiful Bill in July. And in recent months, he’s emerged as the main Republican voice pushing for the release of the Epstein files.
This week, in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk, Massie pointed a finger at Trump’s conduct, saying that, while it doesn’t offend him that the president is “over the top with his rhetoric,” he “should probably tone that down himself.”
Massie has cultivated a following in his Northern Kentucky-anchored seat, particularly with his fellow contrarian conservatives who are not in lockstep with the Republican Party — cutting a sort of House district version of the profile Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has established statewide.
Yet by repeatedly confronting Trump and emerging as one of the few congressional Republicans to criticize Israel, Massie has become a top intra-party target.
An anti-Massie Super PAC that’s being orchestrated in part by two of Trump’s 2024 campaign advisers — Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio — had already raised $2 million as of this summer. That’s thanks in part to large contributions from major GOP givers like Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson, who are, to put it mildly, able to give plenty more.
Massie had $1.7 million on hand as of the end of June.
However, he almost certainly won’t get any financial help from House Republican leaders, who’ve all but excommunicated him for his Trump criticism and opposition to party-line bills.
“He is actively working against his team almost daily now and seems to enjoy that role,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju of Massie. “So he is, you know, deciding his own fate.”
It’s also fundraising that has some well-connected Republicans hoping that Cameron may change his mind about the House race.
While he still leads in early polling in the Senate race, thanks in part to name recognition from his past statewide campaigns, Cameron only had $532,000 in the bank as of this summer. That’s a paltry number, especially compared to his two top GOP rivals: Rep. Andy Barr, a Lexington-based lawmaker, had $6.1 million on hand, and Nate Morris is a well-connected businessman who can also spend his money on the race.
Asked about the prospect of Cameron jumping into the House race, a Massie ally joked: “If the frontrunner in the Senate race, Daniel Cameron, wants to run for Congress, then Thomas Massie will switch with him and become the frontrunner in the Senate race.”
