A House GOP Power Broker Faces A Surprise Challenger With Ties To Roger Stone

Rep. Tom Cole, the recently installed House Appropriations chair, is up against a self-funded candidate who Cole says is a carpetbagger.

The life of a House Appropriations Committee chair is supposed to be easy. Leading the panel that helps decide which government agencies and programs get how much money each year is traditionally among the most powerful perches in Washington.

But for Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who took over the committee in April, that deference hasn’t extended back home, where he is facing an unexpectedly strong primary challenge from a political unknown who moved across the Red River from Texas to run.

“It’s totally bizarre,” Cole, one of the longest-serving House Republicans and a link between the pre- and post-Donald Trump GOPs, told HuffPost. “We know he did multiple surveys in a variety of districts. So he was clearly district-shopping. And for whatever reason, he thought I was the easiest target.”

In the current antiestablishment environment, and in an election that will test who can appeal most to the pro-Trump, anti-Ukraine base of today’s Republican Party, Cole’s strengths in Washington could be liabilities back home.

His seniority in Congress allowed him to become chair of the Appropriations Committee, and the respect he has from members of his own party, as well as many Democrats, can now be portrayed as evidence that he’s part of the Washington “swamp.”