As of Thursday evening, House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) was narrowly leading an open primary in his 4th Congressional district that encompasses the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state with a Democratic Party challenger 1,000 votes behind.
Newhouse, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection, was No. 1 out of eight candidates in the open primary and had won more than 26% of the 112,000 votes counted as of 6 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday, according to results posted by the Washington Secretary of State’s office.
The incumbent Newhouse needs only to finish in the top two in order to qualify for the general election ballot in November. The 112,000 votes counted represents about 70% of those cast, according to an online New York Times tracker.
Another GOP appropriations committee member in a neighboring district, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash), who also alienated many in her party over her vote to impeach Trump, remains a distant second in the state’s 3rd district at press time. The incumbent is the top Republican so far, trailing Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, 31% to 23%, according to the latest figures from the Secretary of State’s office and the New York Times.
Herrera Beutler is clinging to a lead of less than 2,000 votes over Trump-backed Republican candidate Joe Kent, who is currently third with 22% of the vote. Kent was the No. 3 vote getter out of eight in the district 3 race with 158,000 votes counted, which represents 87% of votes cast, according to the district 3 data. The top two vote getters advance to the general election.
The No. 2 vote getter to Newhouse at deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor was Democrat Doug White, who had about 25% of the vote. The third-place candidate was Trump-backed Republican Loren Culp with 21%. The top two finishers face off in the November general election. Culp would need a net gain of 6,000 votes to overtake Newhouse as the top GOP candidate in the district.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Rep. Eric Meijer (R-Mich.), a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee who voted to impeach, went down to defeat against Republican candidate John Gibbs, who is backed by the former president, according to CNN.