Chip Roy Tests GOP Voters' Appetite for Trump Dissenters
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Mr. Roy, 48 years old, has bucked GOP leaders, delayed passage of high-profile bills and broken at times with former President Donald Trump, who called last month for a Republican to challenge him in the next primary election. Headed into the 2022 midterms, Mr. Roy will be a case study in whether a conservative Republican usually aligned with Mr. Trump can survive politically after angering the former president—even a modest amount. “I’ve enormous respect for what the Trump administration did for this country,” Mr. Roy said in an interview. “But you can have differences of opinion on this stuff. And if we can’t, then who are we as Americans? We’re supposed to be able to have those robust disagreements.”
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Mr. Roy’s most high-profile divergences with the former president began after the 2020 election, when Mr. Trump began pressing his supporters to challenge President Biden’s victory when Congress convened to certify the states’ electoral votes on Jan. 6. Mr. Roy was one of a handful of House Republicans who publicly spoke out in favor of certifying the results, saying it wasn’t the role of the federal government to intervene in states’ decisions.
Later, after pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to stop the certification, Mr. Roy said on the House floor that Mr. Trump had engaged in “clearly impeachable conduct—pressuring the vice president to violate his oath to the Constitution to count the electors.” Then-Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the vote count, rebuffed Mr. Trump by saying he didn’t have authority to overturn the will of voters.
However, unlike Mr. Gonzales and nine other Republicans, Mr. Roy didn’t ultimately vote to impeach Mr. Trump, citing concerns over how Democrats had drafted the article of impeachment. “I don’t think that appeased or pleased anybody,” said George Hammerlein, president of Kerr County Patriots, a conservative group in Mr. Roy’s district, which lies between Austin and San Antonio. But Mr. Hammerlein said he gave Mr. Roy credit for staying more than three hours at one of the group’s recent meetings, where he was lambasted by angry constituents. “There were some really hard-core supporters of Trump that just felt like he had killed their dog,” Mr. Hammerlein said. “He took the arrows in the chest for hours.”
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Mr. Roy has already drawn at least one primary challenger, GOP physician Robert Lowry, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission and flagged by the Texas Tribune. The deadline is Dec. 13 ahead of next year’s March 1 primary... His political fate could be influenced by two factors: how much Mr. Trump decides to get involved in the race, and how state legislators redraw congressional district boundaries as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process. Under the reapportionment process that follows the U.S. Census, Texas will get two more House seats, setting up a reshuffling that could affect many of the state’s lawmakers.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/chip-roy-tests-gop-voters-appetite-for-trump-dissenters-11623490201 (subscription)