- Controversial Rep. Steve King is facing a tough primary challenge from State Senator Randy Feenstra in Iowa's 4th congressional district.
- King, who has a long history of making racist comments, lost his committee assignments in January 2019, has seen his fundraising plummet
- Polls closed in Iowa at 9 p.m. Central Time and 10 p.m. ET.
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For years, Democrats have tried and failed to dispatch Rep. Steve King, who has won re-election every year since he entered Congress in 2003 despite years of publicly aligning himself with white nationalists and white supremacists.
But King has become such a sore spot for his own party that much of the mainstream Republican Party apparatus has now united behind GOP State Senator Randy Feenstra to mount a primary challenge to King in Iowa's safe-red fourth congressional district, located in the northwest portion of the state.
According to the most recent campaign filings, Feenstra has raised three times as much and spent over twice as much on his campaign as King, who only reported $32,000 in total cash-on-hand for his campaign and hasn't even been able to air any ads.
Here's our closing ad of the campaign. Great news yesterday...a poll released showed us up 41%-39% over @SteveKingIA We still have to pay for the last week of TV in Sioux City and we are short $14,876. Can you chip in today and keep us on the air. #IA04 https://t.co/Jitag51N1v pic.twitter.com/RogCLhY20x
— Randy Feenstra (@RandyFeenstra) May 21, 2020
Politico reported that groups including the Chamber of Commerce, the political arm of the Republican Main Street Partnership, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and a number of powerful Evangelical groups in Iowa are spending money in the district on TV ads, text messages, and other campaign materials to support Feenstra.
While Republicans have distanced themselves from King and his controversial comments for years, he was formally rebuked and stripped of his committee assignments for racist remarks he made to The New York Times in a January 2019 interview.
"White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?" King rhetorically wondered to The Times."Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?"
King's remarks sparked widespread, bipartisan outrage and condemnation, despite King's claims that he had been misquoted and misunderstood.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expelled King from serving on any committees in the 116th Congress, and the House passed a near-unanimous resolution denouncing white supremacy in all forms.
While King has been continually re-elected since his first run in 2002 despite a long track-record of tacitly supporting avowed white supremacists and making racist comments, the loss of his committee assignments was the strongest rebuke he'd ever received from Republican leadership.
Loss of committee assignments is a serious punishment for members of Congress. The vast majority of the work in Congress is done in committee, and membership in specialized committees uniquely allows members to deliver benefits back to their districts and secure concrete legislative accomplishments.
Even after losing his committee assignments, King didn't stop making news with his controversial comments, publicly comparing his repudiation from his own party to "a lynch mob" and likening his experience to Jesus Christ's crucifixion — much to the chagrin of the rest of the Republican caucus.
Then, at an August 2019 event in Iowa, King created another firestorm and sparked more calls for his resignation by questioning whether "there would be any population" without pregnancies from rape and incest.
King, who is ardently anti-abortion, was arguing in favor of banning abortions without any exemptions for pregnancies that resulted from rape or incest in an address to the Westside Conservative Club.
"We know the reasons why we don't accept exceptions, most of us, for rape and incest, because it's not the baby's fault. But I certainly wonder about this...what if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out who was a product of rape or incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?" he said, according to the Des Moines Register.
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