Trump scrambling to find challenger to GOP lawmaker who backed his impeachment: report

According to a report from Politico, one Republican House member who is on Donald Trump's hit list for voting to impeach the former president appears to cruising to re-election despite Trump promising he "will never win again."

As Politico's Michael Kruse wrote, Rep. John Katko (R-NY) -- a former prosecutor -- was the first Republican to announce he would vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol riot and, while he is expected to have a tougher election than he has in the past, GOP officials in his district expect him to prevail.

According to the report, "Katko spent most of 2021 dealing in one way or another with the political ramifications of what he did in its first two weeks. Last Jan. 6, after dismissing the false notion that the 2020 election had been 'stolen' from defeated president Donald Trump, the former federal prosecutor sheltered in his Capitol office behind barricaded doors. Listening to menacing steps in the halls, he called on Trump to 'end this, now,' before becoming one of ten House members to vote for impeachment.

And while Trump's attacks have led two of those House members, Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) to not seek re-election, Katko remain popular in his district where he did better than President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

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While Gerard Kassar, the chair of the state’s Conservative Party, stated, "We will not be endorsing him,” and Bernie Ment, the Onondaga Conservative chair added, "He’s gotta go," Ryan McMahon, another Onondaga County executive admitted, "He’s going to be a tough out in a primary. And he’s a harder out in a general.”

According to Kruse, the odds of ousting Katko don't look good for fans of Trump, who has yet to find a challenger to the Republican worthy of his endorsement.

Writing, "Katko stands as one of Trump’s more vexing targets, a one-man, real-time rebuke to the idea that the insufficiently acquiescent cannot survive in a party ostensibly led by a man who has declared war on people like him," Kruse added that, when it comes to GOP challengers, "At the moment, he has two — and the more serious of them is a political novice. Trump has pledged to back and help Katko’s challenger — although he conspicuously has not given one of his 'Complete and Total' endorsements."

According to the report, Katko might be the only Republican who can hold the seat in a district that went not only for Biden in 2020, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- which is putting the GOP in a bind of ousting the lawmaker to keep Trump happy -- but losing the seat to a Democrat.

"Who would want to try to knock him off in June only to get clobbered in November? — and it might mean, too, say experts and analysts, that Katko is the one Republican with a chance to hold the seat," Politico's Kruse suggested. "Even this ongoing uncertainty ultimately could be to Katko’s advantage, leaving less time for a rival to stand up an operation to topple a proven winner who seldom has raised more money and is on the cusp of becoming Homeland Security chair should the GOP take back the House."

You can read more here.