After Rep. Tom Rice became the first electoral victim of Donald Trump’s revenge campaign against the Republicans who voted to impeach him, a GOP colleague who had also backed the former President’s impeachment reached out to the South Carolina lawmaker and attempted to console him.
“I told him afterward, I said, ‘So much for the adage that members of Congress are more concerned about their next election than their job here,’” retiring Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan recalled telling Rice, in a nod to the fact that his impeachment vote is likely what cost him in last week’s Republican primary for South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District.