Steve King, House Republican With a History of Racist Remarks, Loses Primary - The New York Times

King, one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, saw his power in Congress curtailed last year after he questioned why white supremacy was considered offensive.

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

His loss after 18 years in office was mainly because opponents painted him as ineffective after party leaders in Congress stripped him of his committee assignments last year.

King lost his committee assignments.

King by House colleagues, five Republican congressmen donated to Mr.

King, 71, claimed during the campaign that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, had privately pledged to help him regain his committee assignments.

McCarthy denied having said any such thing, adding that if the Republican Steering Committee, which decides on committee roles, met again to weigh in on Mr.

Even before facing Republican discipline in the House in January 2019 after the Times interview, Mr.

Just before the election, the head of the Republican House campaign arm, Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, issued a highly unusual rebuke of Mr.

King, who founded an earth-moving company, stood on the House floor and showed off a model of a 12-foot border wall of his own design.

King — who even then was snubbed by establishment Republicans like the former House speaker John A.

King of having supported him, and raised money for him during an Iowa visit in 2014, Mr.

King routinely won the backing of other Iowa Republicans, including Gov

“For two decades Steve King has been something of the sun in the political universe around here,” Douglas Burns, an owner of newspapers in Mr