On the evening of May 19, 2026, in a banquet hall in Hebron, Kentucky, a defeated congressman raised a toast of raw milk, and before the night was out the crowd was chanting for him to run for president. Thomas Massie had just lost. By a margin of roughly 55 to 45 percent, the four-term incumbent had been turned out of the Republican primary in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District by Ed Gallrein—a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who had never held elected office and who declined to debate his opponent even once.

Massie lost the vote but seemed to win the room. The more telling fact, though, was that the contest that ended his congressional career was not, by most accounts, decided by the people of northern Kentucky at all. It was the most expensive primary for a U.S. House seat in the nation's history—by some tallies north of $34 million, combined across both campaigns and a swarm of outside groups, poured into a single district most Americans could not find on a map. For anyone who cares about self-government, the race warrants a close look: it is a case study in what happens when national money, presidential power, and ideologically motivated donor networks converge on a local election, and a sobering occasion to ask who, exactly, is governing whom.

The maverick who broke too many rules

Thomas Massie was never an ordinary congressman. An MIT-trained engineer who powers his Kentucky farm with solar panels and once drove a Tesla with the plate "KYNUKE," he built a national following as one of the few legislators willing to vote no on his own party's bills, often as the lone dissenter. He had held Kentucky's 4th District since a 2012 special election, and he had held it comfortably—roughly 75 percent of the primary vote in 2024, around 65 percent of the general. By his own estimate, in an ordinary year he would have won this primary with 80 percent.

This was not an ordinary year, because Massie had spent it collecting powerful enemies. He opposed short-term funding bills on fiscal grounds. He resisted military action against Iran and Venezuela, insisting that Congress, not the president, holds the power to declare war. He sponsored what became the Epstein Files Transparency Act, forcing the release of documents that, by his telling, had already implicated CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, and a prime minister. And—most consequentially—he was one of the very few Republicans willing to criticize the U.S. relationship with Israel: he voted against aid packages, skipped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2024 address to Congress, and refused on principle to take money from groups whose central purpose was supporting a foreign government.

Each of those stances had a constituency that wanted him gone. Together, they drew a coalition unlike anything ever assembled against a single House member.

The most expensive primary in history

By the most widely cited count, from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, nearly $33 million was spent on the race; some tallies put it as high as $35 million. Either way it shattered the prior record—the 2024 New York Democratic primary that unseated Representative Jamaal Bowman, which drew about $25 million. But the headline figure can mislead, because it is combined spending across both campaigns and every outside group—and the bulk was aimed against Massie. By Al Jazeera's count, outside groups spent more than $25.8 million, including over $15.5 million from PACs tied to pro-Israel donors. On Massie's side, two pro-Massie PACs spent roughly $7.6 million, atop the $5.5 million his own campaign raised. The money was lopsided, but it was not one-sided.

The effort aimed at Massie ran along two reinforcing lines. The first was Trump-aligned: MAGA KY PAC, run by Trump advisers Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, spent roughly $7.5 million backing Gallrein and attacking Massie. Its disclosed early funding came from three out-of-state donors—hedge-fund billionaires Paul Singer ($1 million) and John Paulson ($250,000), and Preserve America PAC ($750,000), the super PAC bankrolled by casino magnate Miriam Adelson—though the group never made its later finances fully public.