Donald Trump displayed his supremacy over the Republican party on Tuesday when voters in northern Kentucky rejected the maverick congressman Thomas Massie in favour of the US president’s hand-picked challenger.
Ed Gallrein, a retired navy Seal and farmer who was recruited into the race by Trump, defeated the seven-term incumbent in a primary election in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district in what the president’s allies framed as a test of whether dissent could still exist inside today’s Republican party.
The election took place as voters in five other states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho – went to the polls to decide their nominees for the November general election, in what was the biggest primary night of the year so far.
In Georgia’s gubernatorial race, lieutenant governor Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson advanced to a runoff for the GOP nomination, while former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic nomination outright. And in Alabama, Trump ally Tommy Tuberville won the Republican primary for governor, while former senator Doug Jones secured the Democratic nomination.