While the Republican Party censors, condemns, and seeks to purge leaders who are not on the side of Donald Trump, Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois congressman for six terms, stands as enemy number one, unwelcome not only in his party but also In his. family, some of whom recently disowned him.
Two days after Kinzinger called for Trump to be removed from office after January 6 riot at the Capitol11 members of his family sent him a two-page handwritten letter, saying he was in cahoots with “the devil’s army” for publicly breaking with the president.
“Oh what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the last name Kinzinger!”
The author of the letter was Karen Otto, Kinzinger’s cousin, who paid $ 7 to send it by certified mail to Kinzinger’s father, to make sure the congressman saw it, which she did. He also sent copies to Republicans in Illinois, including other members of the state Congressional delegation.
“I wanted Adam to be rejected,” he said in an interview.
Kinzinger, a 42-year-old Air National Guard pilot representing a crescent-shaped district throughout Chicago’s suburbs, is at the forefront of the effort to navigate post-Trump politics. He is betting his political career, professional relationships and kinship with a wing of his extended family that the future of his party lies in repudiating Trump and the conspiracy theories stoked by the former president.
Kinzinger was one of three House Republicans who voted for both accuse Trump and strip Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee seats. During the impeachment debate in the House, he asked Democrats if he could speak for seven minutes instead of his allotted minutes, so that he could make a more authoritative and bipartisan argument against the president; the request was denied.
He has taken his case to the national media, becoming a ubiquitous figure on cable television, HBO late-night programming, and podcasts. A new political action committee began with a six-minute video declaring the need to reformat the Republican Party into something like an idealized version of George W. Bush’s party, with an emphasis on lower taxes, tough defense, and conservatism. social, without the grievances. and conspiracy theories that Trump and his allies have made central to the party’s identity.
To do so, Kinzinger said in an interview, it is necessary to expose the fear-based tactics he hopes to eradicate from the party and present an optimistic alternative.
“We are just afraid,” he said. Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear of everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is that it does real damage to this democracy ”.
Kinzinger said he was not deterred by the Senate’s failure to convict Trump in impeachment on Saturday.
“We have a lot of work to do to restore the Republican Party,” he said, “and change the course of personality politics.”
Kinzinger now faces the classic challenge of political mavericks seeking to demonstrate their independence: His stubborn and uncompromising nature irritates the very Republicans he’s trying to recruit for his mission to remake the party.
His anti-Trump stance has angered Republican voters in his district, some of whom liken him to a Democrat, and frustrated Republican officials in Illinois who say he cares more about his own national exposure than his relationship with them.
“There doesn’t seem to be a camera or a microphone that he doesn’t run to,” said Larry Smith, chairman of the La Salle County Republican Party, which censured Kinzinger last month. “He used to talk to us in the old days.”
Kinzinger is unapologetic about his priorities.
“Central and northern Illinois deserve an explanation and deserve my full attention, and they will understand it,” he said. “But to the extent that I can, I will also focus on the national message because I can convert all hearts in central and northern Illinois, and it wouldn’t make a dent in the whole game. And that’s what I think the great battle is. “
Kinzinger has received praise from Democrats, but he is no one’s idea of a progressive. Her campaign website proclaims her long-standing opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and opposes abortion rights and increased taxes. She first won her seat in Congress with the endorsement of Sarah Palin.
Raised in a large family in central Illinois (his father, who has 32 first cousins, ran food banks and homeless shelters in Peoria and Bloomington), Kinzinger became interested in politics from an early age. Before his 10th birthday, he predicted that he would one day be governor or president, Otto said, and won the McLean County Board election as a 20-year-old sophomore at Illinois State University.
He joined the Air Force after the September 11 attacks and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Upon his discharge he joined the Air National Guard, where he remains a lieutenant colonel. In the Republican wave of 2010, Kinzinger, then 32, beat a Democrat in office by nearly 15 percentage points and, two years later, with the support of Eric Cantor, then House Majority Leader, overthrew to another Republican in office, Don Manzullo, a 10-term primary following redistricting.
But Kinzinger was soon put off by a Republican Party that he believed was targeting opposition to any proposal by President Barack Obama without offering new ideas of its own.
“His level of frustration has been mounting since he came to Congress, and I think he has found it difficult to understand and participate in the Trump era,” said former Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas, one of Kinzinger’s closest friends. in Congress before losing a 2018 re-election bid. When loyalty to Trump became a litmus test for Republican conservatism, Yoder said, “it became a bridge too far for him.”
While Kinzinger never presented himself as a Trump loyalist, he rarely broke up with the former president on political grounds, but has been critical of him since the 2016 campaign, when he was a replacement for Jeb Bush.
Trump was aware of Kinzinger’s lack of loyalty. At a suburban Chicago fundraiser ahead of the 2016 election, Trump asked Richard Porter, a member of the Illinois Republican National Committee, how Kinzinger would fare in his re-election bid. Porter recalled telling the future president that he had no opponent.
Trump, Porter said, stuck his finger to his chest and told him to give Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. When Porter relayed the comment to Kinzinger during an election day conversation, Kinzinger laughed and invited Trump to do the same.
In Illinois, Republicans have been struggling to guess what Kinzinger’s next move might be. In the interview, Kinzinger said he is unlikely to seek the 2022 nomination for governor or the Senate. Right now, he is leaning toward running for re-election, but with redistricting looming this fall, it’s unclear how the Democratic-controlled state legislature will reorganize his district.
What is clear is that Kinzinger has found himself on the wrong side of grassroots Republicans at home. John McGlasson, a member of the Kinzinger district committee, said the congressman had been “insulting with his comments” since Jan. 6.
Republican voters interviewed in the district last week criticized Kinzinger for turning against Trump.
“If you want to vote Democrat, vote Democrat,” said Richard Reinhardt, a 63-year-old retired mechanical engineer, over lunch at a Thai restaurant in Rockford. “Otherwise, if you are a Republican, support our president. Trump was the first president to represent me. The things he did helped me. “
Kinzinger predicted that “the hangover” from Trump’s popularity after impeachment will “wear off.”
Former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the last Republican to win state office in Illinois in 2014, said Kinzinger could be the victim of the bitter schism that divides the party. “The only winners in the war between Trump and the Republicans will be the Democrats,” Rauner said. “For some voters, character matters. For most, this is not the case. “
Kinzinger said he has little desire to reach the loudest critics in his district’s Republican organizations, whom he hasn’t spoken to in years, and said they have little influence over voters. His family’s letter writers, he said, are “brainwashed” by conservative churches that have led them astray.
“I have nothing against them,” he said, “but I have no desire nor do I feel the need to reach out and repair that. That’s 100% of them to come and repair, and honestly, I don’t care if they do it or not. “
As for his own future in the party, Kinzinger said that by the end of the summer he will know whether he can remain a Republican in the long run or whether he will be motivated to change his party affiliation if he is clear that Trump’s allies have become a permanent majority.
“The party is sick right now,” he said. “It is one thing for the party to accept different points of view, but it has become a huge litmus test for everything. So it’s a possibility in the future, but it’s certainly not my intention, and I’m going to fight like hell to save him first. “
.
She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.