A daily reminder of the war 6,600 miles away sits at the corner of Second and Main Streets in Falmouth, Ky., where the cost of gas at the local BP pumps is $4.62 a gallon.
Sam McClanahan has watched the price climb for months as the U.S. war with Iran has dragged on. He tracks it anxiously from his office at the Falmouth Outlook, the town’s weekly newspaper, where he oversees advertising. And like many Republican voters here, Mr. McClanahan, 43, blames President Trump.
What happened, he asks, to “America First?”
“This was supposed to be the thing he was most focused on, making things better here,” Mr. McClanahan said, sitting on a bench outside the newspaper office. “But it feels like he’s turned his back on us.”
This week, Mr. Trump was asked if the financial hardship for Americans was motivating him to make a deal with Iran. He answered with blunt certainty: “Not even a little bit.”
But the economic impact of the Middle East conflict, demonstrated most acutely by the price of gas, remains a daily hardship for many voters. And perhaps nowhere is the debate over the war more urgent than in northern Kentucky.
Next week, Republican voters in the state’s Fourth Congressional District will decide whether to renominate Representative Thomas Massie, who has been the party’s most outspoken critic of the war. He is facing the most serious threat to his political career from Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump.
Republicans remain broadly supportive of the war in Iran, according to public polling. But interviews with more than two dozen voters in Mr. Massie’s district show that many Republicans are deeply skeptical about the ultimate outcome and frustrated by the squeeze on their wallets.
All of this makes their Election Day calculus complicated. Some who question the wisdom of the war say they are nonetheless supporters of the president and will vote for Mr. Gallrein. Some supporters of the conflict are nonetheless fans of Mr. Massie.
The Kentucky district includes suburbs of both Cincinnati and Louisville. Green rolling hills stretch for miles and miles through rural areas dotted with small towns, sprawling farms and bourbon distilleries. Farmers, business owners and suburban parents say they keep a constant mental tally of the cost of gas. It is hardly unusual for them to burn through a $100 tank in a day of driving a pickup truck.
“This is basically the opposite of everything the president campaigned on,” said Shane Kennedy, 57, a retired police officer and three-time Trump voter in Cynthiana, a small town with streets lined with 19th-century buildings. “It’s the opposite of what we want. He’s basically criticizing his own policies now, and we’re paying the price for it.”
Voters here have long produced iconoclastic politicians, including Senator Rand Paul, a staunch ally of Mr. Massie’s and one of the most vocal critics of the war in the Senate. Mr. Paul’s father, Ron Paul, ran for president three times, including as the nominee of the Libertarian Party in 1988, and Mr. Massie has called him a mentor.
For many, Mr. Massie’s fierce independence is his defining feature. Although he was elected amid the Tea Party wave in 2012, he pointedly declined to join the right-wing Freedom Caucus, saying he was a representative for his district, not a caucus.
But this deeply red state is also a stronghold for the president, and many in the district are enraged that their congressman has become one of Mr. Trump’s loudest critics.
“You can sit there and disagree and debate as much as you want, but when it comes time to vote, you have to vote with your party,” said Steve Stockwell, 73, a retired commercial insurance broker, who has voted for Mr. Massie in every other election but now supports Mr. Gallrein. Republican unity is important, he added, “especially because the enemy has so much power now,” referring to Democrats in Washington. Mr. Massie, he said, is “just an anti-Trumper.”
Mr. Stockwell had just finished his lunch at Biancke’s Restaurant in Cynthiana, where the walls are lined with photographs of local high school graduates going back to 1914. “This isn’t like any other time in our history,” he said. “It’s no longer just politics.”
Mr. Massie has long been deeply skeptical of military intervention. This year, he forced a vote in the House to block further strikes on Iran without congressional approval. Just one other Republican joined him and the Democrats to vote for the measure, which was defeated.
Mr. Massie’s opposition to the war and aid to Israel have helped make his race the most expensive congressional primary on record, with more than $30 million spent on advertising so far. The Republican Jewish Coalition and United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and other outside groups aligned with Mr. Trump have spent more that $16 million on ads targeting Mr. Massie, according to AdImpact. Several accuse him of siding with liberal Democrats such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
Those advertisements have been met with eye rolls from Mr. Massie’s supporters who see themselves as staunch conservatives and worry that Israel had pressured Mr. Trump into the war.
“Why is Israel telling us what to do?” asked Ambrose Brueggemann, 28, a power line worker who came to hear Mr. Massie speak to the Boone County Republican Party in Burlington this week. “Foreign wars are hurting Americans, so why do we keep doing the same thing?”
Charles Kunkel, a 34-year-old construction worker, expressed similar frustration.
“There’s no clear vision of why we’re there, when we will get out, how we will get out,” Mr. Kunkel said. “All Massie is doing is fulfilling the promises he made 10 or 15 years ago — the same things the president promised but has now done a 180 on.”
The war came up only obliquely as voters spoke to Mr. Massie, couched in comments about the cost of living and support for Israel. People around the world, Mr. Massie said, “are waiting to see what Kentucky does.”
In an interview after the event, Mr. Massie said that his campaign’s internal polling showed his position on the war “is at odds with the majority viewpoint in this election.” Still, he said, he believed more Republicans would ultimately sour on the conflict.
“If not for the fact that gas is $5 a gallon, it might be totally forgotten at this point,” he said, adding that the economic impact would surely hurt Republicans in November. “I’m troubled because I think we could get stuck there, possibly for this entire administration, and if we get stuck and people realize why the price of things went up — it’s a losing issue.”
Still, even some supporters of the war say they are sticking with Mr. Massie. Marcia Mitchum, a nonprofit executive whose children and grandchildren have served in the military, said she strongly believes “there’s craziness going on over there we need to deal with.”
“There is a strategy behind getting rid of a huge threat,” she said, standing inside a coffee shop in Shelbyville. Ms. Mitchum calls herself a “true Trumpster,” but said she had no hesitation voting for Mr. Massie. “He has integrity. I think it’s good to have checks and balances, to have someone pushing and questioning and debating.”
Avi Bear, a longtime local Republican activist, keeps a baseball cap embroidered with Mr. Massie’s name perched on top of his desk. He remembers Mr. Massie’s first congressional election with pride and delight. But he has grown furious in recent months as Mr. Massie has become more and more critical of the attacks on Iran and aid to Israel, where Mr. Bear emigrated from more than 40 years ago.
“He criticizes but he hasn’t accomplished anything,” Mr. Bear said, sitting in his Cynthiana office, where he runs businesses selling pastries and high-end pet food. “This is a war to save the world, in my opinion. They say they want to wipe us off the face of the earth. We are not an island in this world.”
Still, Mr. Bear said, he may cast a ballot for Mr. Massie next week.
“I’m a business person,” he said. “You have to compromise sometimes.”
