On Tuesday, a political earthquake shook Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District as incumbent Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who had spent years challenging the influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups and opposing massive foreign aid packages, fell to challenger Ed Gallrein in a competitive Republican primary. What made this race stand out on the national stage was its record-breaking price tag: outside groups, overwhelmingly led by pro-Israel political action committees, poured more than $10 million into negative advertising aimed at removing Massie from Capitol Hill, making it the costliest U.S. House primary contest in American history.
Shortly after the race was called by the Associated Press less than an hour after polls closed, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of the most influential pro-Israel lobbying groups in the country, publicly celebrated Gallrein’s win in a post on X. “Congratulations to US Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein for defeating anti-Israel incumbent Thomas Massie!” the group wrote. “Pro-Israel Americans are proud to back candidates who support a strong [US-Israel] alliance and help defeat those who work to undermine it. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!”
Gallrein, a 68-year-old political novice and former Navy SEAL who had never held public office before, secured former President Donald Trump’s endorsement after pledging personal loyalty to the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner. In a striking rebuke of the incumbent Massie just one day before the primary, Trump called Massie “the worst congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican party.” The break between the two figures, despite Massie voting in line with Trump’s policy agenda more than 90 percent of the time and aligning with the president on core conservative priorities such as restrictive immigration policies and abortion bans, is widely traced back to Massie’s long-running push for the full public release of all classified documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case — a move that political analysts say could have posed political risk to Trump.
Massie’s break with powerful pro-Interest lobbying groups had been building for years. For more than a decade, he refused to accept campaign donations from organizations centered on advancing Israeli policy goals, and he publicly opposed all major U.S. foreign aid packages, including those for Israel, Egypt, Ukraine, and Syria. During a Monday interview with CBS News, Massie made his position clear: “Pro-Israel groups have tried to buy my vote for 14 years, and it was never for sale. No country is special, and no country deserves my constituents’ taxpayer dollars. So I have never voted for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Israel, or to Ukraine – but the ones in Israel, since they’re the biggest recipients of it, that makes them a little bit mad.” When asked twice by reporter Ed O’Keefe if he was an antisemite, Massie flatly rejected the label, responding “Oh hell no.” He argued that anti-Zionism is not equivalent to antisemitism, saying that equating the two does a major disservice to Jewish Americans.
In a conversation with Tucker Carlson earlier in May, Massie laid out the full scope of the outside spending against him, estimating that at least 95 percent of his opponent’s campaign funding originated from pro-Israel lobbying groups and allied billionaires with no ties to Kentucky. He specifically named AIPAC, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and Christians United for Israel, along with three high-profile billionaires — Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson — who have become major players in shaping U.S. election outcomes. Massie noted that these groups uniformly back a more interventionist foreign policy, increased military spending, and unrestricted foreign aid, all positions he has consistently opposed during his time in Congress.
“[The money] didn’t come from regular people. It’s come from billionaires, and 95 percent of it – at least 95 percent – has come from the Israeli lobby,” Massie told Carlson. “Their position is more war, it’s more strife, it’s more bombs, it’s more foreign aid, and those are the things that I’ve been voting against. So the real reason that this race is a serious race, and I may lose, is because a foreign lobby has fully funded to the extent that they’ve never done in any Republican race ever before.”
While Massie raised roughly $5 million for his own campaign, pro-Israel groups spent double that on attack ads, including a controversial AI-generated deepfake that falsely depicted Massie meeting with members of “The Squad,” the high-profile bloc of progressive congressional Democrats, at a hotel. When Carlson asked why out-of-state pro-Israel groups would invest so heavily in a small Republican primary in Kentucky, Massie framed himself as a rare whistleblower within Congress: “If I lose on May 19, I’ll be out of Congress on January 3 next year, and nobody’s gonna follow my Twitter, nobody’s gonna go to my Facebook page to see what’s going on. I won’t be invited down into the secret SCIFs to read the secret interpretations of the laws that the executive branch is using to spy on you. The one whistleblower, if you will, in Congress, will be gone.”
A rare bipartisan figure in an deeply polarized Congress, Massie had partnered with progressive Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California on two high-profile initiatives: pushing for the release of the full Epstein files and limiting the president’s unilateral war powers. This is not the first time pro-Israel lobbying groups have successfully defeated sitting members of Congress; the groups previously ousted progressive incumbents Cory Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York in 2022 primaries.
Following the announcement of the results, some critics of the outside spending praised Massie for retaining his principles. Joe Kent, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March over his refusal to back potential U.S. military action against Iran at Israel’s behest, wrote on X that “God bless Thomas Massie. He walks out of this with his honor intact. He’s a patriot & kept his integrity. As long as the voters give their votes to whoever can run the most ads we will have politicians who are purchased by foreign governments & corporate interests.”
Gallrein will now advance to November’s general election as the Republican nominee for the safe Republican district, setting the stage for the general election campaign this fall.