Tuesday brought Ryan’s first public remarks since Trump ignited his latest public firestorm earlier in the day while speaking in North Carolina.
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Paul Nehlen, who was backed by Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter, focused his campaign on Ryan’s establishment ties and linked himself to Trump’s outsider status.
“In times as uncertain as these it’s easy to resort to division. that stuff sells but it doesn’t stick. most of all, it doesn’t work”.
It made the primary race a proxy war for forces within the GOP that support Ryan’s business-friendly brand of conservatism versus the party’s nationalist, populist wing, which backs Trump.
Meanwhile, the primary’s other top race was in northeastern Wisconsin, where GOP Rep. Reid Ribble’s retirement opened a swing congressional seat.
A self-described “movement conservative” whose politics are rooted in the tax-cutting platforms of Republicans past, Ryan has been uneasy from the start about parts of Trump’s candidacy and its especially tenets on trade and immigration.
Ryan is expected to easily win his race against Democrat Tom Breu in November.
In one July 23 incident, Nehlen supporters and mothers whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants challenged Ryan’s lack of full support for Trump’s immigration agenda.
The race managed to draw national media attention following Trump’s initial hesitation to endorse Ryan – using similar language to what Ryan had said ahead of his endorsement in June, saying he “wasn’t quite ready” to get behind the incumbent.
An executive at a water-filtration plant who moved to Wisconsin two years ago, Nehlen launched his campaign in April and opened an office in Kenosha, a town on the lip of Lake Michigan that sits on the district’s eastern border.
Trump, under pressure from Republicans, endorsed Ryan three days later.
Ryan has criticized Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
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No House speaker in modern political history had lost a primary, and Ryan was keen to avoid the fate that befell House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 primary, when his political career ended due to a tea party challenger. His massive campaign war chest, with almost $10 million in the bank at the last reporting date, enabled him to air a blitz of ads in the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary.
