Over the past decade, northern Kentucky has been the epicenter of the so-called “liberty” wing movement of the Republican Party, led by lawmakers pushing a more radical policy agenda to limit government spending and regulations.
This liberty movement took a blow last month, as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie — one of its leaders, both in Kentucky and Congress — lost his GOP primary to Ed Gallrein, a candidate recruited and supported by President Donald Trump to defeat the seven-term iconoclast.
The surprising margin of Massie’s loss in his northern Kentucky district — including the movement’s stronghold of Boone County — has led to some speculation that the liberty faction is losing steam among Republican voters in the region.
However, such an interpretation is disputed — not just by the state lawmakers in this faction of the party, but by moderate Republicans that have sparred with them.
Tres Watson is a Republican political operative who runs a PAC that has sought to defeat House GOP liberty incumbents in the past two primary election cycles. The PAC spent more than $60,000 on ads this year to defeat two northern Kentucky incumbents — Reps. Steven Doan and Felicia Rabourn — but both won by wide margins.
Watson noted those are just two of several major victories in the region for liberty candidates this primary, saying Massie’s loss was more of a unique outlier caused by Trump’s influence — both rallying for Gallrein and the enormous spending on attack ads from his aligned PACs.
“I think (Massie’s loss) was purely a function of the president's involvement,” said Watson, adding that the district’s turnout was much higher than usual because the president motivated non-typical voters.
In addition to the victories of Doan and Rabourn, liberty challenger Chet Hand defeated incumbent Boone County Judge-executive Gary Moore, a Republican who has run the county for 28 years — and coincidentally lost to Massie in his first congressional primary in 2012.
Also in Boone County, moderate House GOP Rep. Kim Banta lost her primary narrowly to former Massie staffer Cole Cuzick, despite several establishment PACs coming to her aid with $150,000 of ad spending against the liberty challenger.
“The theory has always been that if you increased turnout, the liberty people would lose,” Watson said. “And it's clear that that is, in fact, not the case.”
The unofficial leader of the liberty caucus in Frankfort is GOP Rep. Savannah Maddox of Dry Ridge, a Massie ally who was first elected in 2018. Once commonly a lone “no” vote on certain spending bills — like Massie in Congress — she has been joined in the Kentucky General Assembly in the past decade by nearly a dozen liberty lawmakers.
Maddox agreed with Watson that Massie’s loss was an anomaly caused by Trump’s involvement and the record-breaking ad spending boosting turnout, and in no way a repudiation of the ideological movement they have built.
“I think we're stronger than ever, and I think that it's going to continue to grow,” Maddox said. “Because we're showing that not only can we win elections, but we are passing legislation and we are engaging in important decision making within the (GOP) caucus.”
‘An obituary for the liberty movement… is mistaken’
The first spark of the liberty movement in Kentucky was set in May of 2010, when Rand Paul won a landslide victory in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate over Trey Grayson, the more moderate candidate backed by the party establishment and Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Arguably Paul’s strongest region was in northern Kentucky, where Grayson lived and the new “Tea Party” movement was especially active. This was followed by the victories of Massie in 2012, Maddox in 2018 and three liberty challengers who knocked out state House GOP incumbents representing parts of Boone County in 2022.
Grayson, now a lobbyist in Frankfort, said despite Massie’s Trump-induced loss, the liberty movement is not waning in the region.
“I think anyone who is writing an obituary for the liberty movement in northern Kentucky is mistaken,” Grayson said. “People came out and voted for Gallrein and voted for the liberty Republicans. They're an important and influential part of the Republican Party in northern Kentucky.”
A review of election results from Massie’s district shows that he even lost in state districts where liberty lawmakers have thrived.
Despite being outspent by her opponent and outside PACs, Rabourn won her primary last month with 58% of the vote — nearly identical to Gallrein’s performance in the district.
Like Rabourn, Doan won the GOP primary in his district by an even larger margin than his 2024 race, winning 78% of the vote, though Gallrein narrowly outnumbered Massie’s votes there.
Doan attributed Massie’s loss in his district to Trump and the enormous amount of money spent against him — roughly $12 million of TV attack ads — which turned out atypical primary voters.
“Trump did what Trump does best, and that is turn out different-motivated voters,” he said.
Doan added that he and other liberty incumbents succeeded because constituents support the work they’re doing at the state level, as “the movement is still alive and well.”
“I had Thomas on my mailers, had Thomas on my literature that I hand out at the doors in the last two cycles, so people know here that I am a close ally of his,” Doan said. “But I think at the end of the day, they looked at me as somebody that was doing a good job down in Frankfort.”
Gallrein also won by a comfortable margin in two other House districts with parts of Boone County, where liberty incumbents Marianne Proctor and TJ Roberts had no challengers after winning their primaries with roughly three-quarters of the vote in 2024.
Roberts also attributes Massie’s loss to the massive spending against him, saying it’s easier at the state and local level “to cut through the nonsense and get to what is actually happening.”
“Heavily-financed propaganda efforts in a district with 750,000 people is way more difficult to dispel the lies about,” Roberts said. “There were clear, heavily funded propaganda efforts, especially against Felicia Rabourn, but because she has about 45,000 people, it's way easier to get ahead of that and tell the truth.”
Roberts said the success of other Massie-aligned local candidates shows “the liberty movement is still alive and well,” in part because GOP leadership in Frankfort — once hostile — is becoming more willing to work with them, as opposed to party leaders in Congress.
“House Republican leadership at the state level, they've gone out of their way to work with me and they've recently been going out of their way to work with the other liberty people as well,” he said. “And I think that's largely because they realize that, by and large, we all have the same mission.”
Trump asserts his grip on northern Kentucky
Even some of Massie’s strongest supporters that blame his defeat on a deluge of misleading attack ads have to admit that his loss shows that, even in northern Kentucky, Trump and what he represents is much more popular among Republican voters than Massie.
“Objectively, based on those who turn out to vote, that would seem to be the case,” Roberts said. “It did show that the Trump endorsement still has its power, it still has its sticking effect. Particularly among the voting blocks that rely on television for their news.”
Roberts, Doan and Maddox all agree that much of the divide between Trump and Massie is generational, with younger voters more welcoming of Massie than older voters. Roberts cited an exit poll he saw that showed Massie winning 75% of millennial and Gen Z primary voters.
Maddox said this age divide was apparent on election night, when Massie gave his concession speech to a packed room of enthusiastic and mostly young supporters.
“You had a room of people who continued to be energized, and I think that it speaks to a larger movement that has developed as a result of this race, particularly among younger people,” Maddox said. “Younger voters who are beginning to realize in a way that they maybe previously didn't, how crucial their involvement is.”
Doan noted that this same energy hasn’t crossed over as much to older voters, sharing that Boone County — which Massie lost by 10 percentage points — appears to be slipping more into Trump’s camp than that of Massie.
“Boone County historically was very popular for Thomas, but they've been consumed by kind of the MAGA movement and moved more towards populism, I think, than towards liberty,” Doan said.
Massie has not indicated what he plans to do next, but has not ruled out either running for reelection in 2028 or running for president. Sen. Rand Paul, who is up for reelection in 2028, has also not ruled out a run for president.
Maddox said that Massie has managed to build his national profile in the race and increase support by being someone willing to stand up for his principles — such as his fight to release the Epstein files, criticize the war with Iran and vote against popular spending bills — even if that put him in the crosshairs of the president and cost him his seat.
“By virtue of President Trump attacking him, he inadvertently grew Congressman Massie's following exponentially,” Maddox said. “So I say that the sky is the limit (for him), whether it's president, whether it's running for Congress again or virtually anything else that he wants to do.”
