Peter Meijer, the fire-haired Iraq war vet, Ivy League grad, and well-heeled scion of the namesake supermarket fortune, was that rare bird when he entered Congress as a 32-year-old on January 3, 2021. Meijer evidenced little interest in building his personal brand through publicity stunts and B.S. culture war media skirmishes. Instead, he had more high-minded goals, like increasing government accountability and competitiveness for Michigan’s third district, which circles Grand Rapids, and used to be Justin Amash territory for all of the aughts. 

Alas, within a fortnight of his sojourn to Washington, Meijer would take a vote that would alter his fortune. He was the only freshman among 10 Republican members with the guts to vote for Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 riot that ransacked the Capitol. This quickly made Meijer a lonely man in Washington. As was the case with Liz Cheney in leadership, the Republican party turned on him. And the Democrats, smelling blood, spent to pump up his Trump-ier primary challenger John Gibbs in the hopes that he would eventually self-immolate, a common occurrence in the midterms. Eventually, the MAGA-friendly Gibbs narrowly defeated Meijer in the primary by less than four points; Democrat Hillary Scholten then went on to crush Gibbs by 12 points in a newly redrawn district. The irony for poor beleaguered Kevin McCarthy is that he lost a likely future Only Kevin vote in his pursuit of placating Trump.