Poll: Justin Amash Trails Primary Challenger by Double Digits After Impeachment Call

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), the first Republican on Capitol Hill to call for impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, trails primary challenger State Rep. Jim Lower by a sizeable margin, according to a poll released Tuesday.

A Practical Political Consulting/MIRS poll shows Amash (33 percent) behind Lower (49 percent) by 16 percent. The poll was conducted between June 5th-9th and served 360 likely Republican voters. Amash’s other primary challenger, Army National Guardsman Tim Norton, was not included in the poll.

The poll comes amid a Politico report stating President Trump has discussed the possibility of backing an Amash primary challenger with Vice President Mike Pence, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), and Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. However, no firm decision has been made on the matter.

The Michigan Republican shocked the Beltway when he accused President Trump of committing “impeachable” offenses stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report and claimed Attorney General William Barr misrepresented the special counsel’s key findings. Team Mueller found no criminal conspiracy occurred between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, and shortly after, Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined that the president did not commit obstruction of justice during the sweeping investigation.

President Trump and top Republicans blasted Amash over his remarks, accusing him of being an attention-seeker with an unimpressive legislative track record to show for his four terms in Congress. “Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” the president tweeted last month. “If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, ‘composed’ by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump, he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION.”

“Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents [sic] hands!” he concluded.

On Monday evening, Amash resigned from the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative congressional group he helped start in 2015, after 30 of his now-former peers voted to condemn his remarks on impeachment.

“I have the highest regard for them and they’re my close friends,” he told CNN of the decision to leave. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”