Last Wednesday, I caught up with Rep. Rodney Davis after a big election night in Republican politics—one in which a single Eric was named victor in Missouri, Trump-backed candidates Blake Masters and Kari Lake won their primaries in Arizona, and ultra-conservative Kansas saw unprecedented turnout in support of abortion rights. Davis, who has been representing Illinois’s 13th congressional district since 2012, has been named one of the top 10 most bipartisan Republicans in Congress. And while Davis did not vote to impeach Donald Trump after January 6, he did vote to certify the election. 

He has the certification vote tally framed on his wall, but it may have proved to be the bullet of his political suicide in the modern G.O.P. Despite being redistricted into an even more entrenched MAGA constituency, he didn’t reach out to Mar-a-Lago for an endorsement. In the end, he was a sitting duck in a primary that pitted him against another incumbent, the Trump-endorsed Rep. Mary Miller, who referred to Roe’s overturning as a “historic victory for white life” during a rally appearance with Trump (her team insisted she meant “the right to life”) and quoted Hitler during a rally in Washington. In the primary, Miller won by 15 points.