The War on Christmas seems to comes earlier every year: Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), a Santa impersonator who was elected to Congress by accident in 2012, was defeated in a 30-point landslide on Tuesday, becoming this year’s first (and probably only) victim of the Republican establishment’s dissatisfaction with congressional tea partiers.
Bentivolio won his party’s nomination two years ago in a fluke after the incumbent, Rep. Thad McCotter, failed to qualify for the ballot and abruptly resigned. (A high school teacher and reindeer rancher, Bentivolio was the only Republican left on the ballot.) Bentivolio never fully sold himself as a serious congressman—he once promised to hold a hearing on chemtrails, the conspiracy theory that airplanes are brainwashing Americans with poison—making him an obvious target, despite winning the backing of Speaker of the House John Boehner.
More interesting than Bentivolio, who always had a placeholder feel to him, is the man who trounced him the primary—David Trott, a high-powered Republican donor whose law firm happens to process most of Michigan’s foreclosures. As one registrar of deeds in southeast Michigan put it in December, Trott & Trott “made a living off of monetizing human misery.” A big donor to the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future, and a member of the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s Michigan finance committee, Trott is an archetypal establishment Republican.
But he’ll still have his work cut out for him: Romney won the 11th district by just four points in 2012. He’ll take on the winner of the Democratic race between former CIA analyst Bobby McKenzie (backed by national Democrats) and urologist Anil Kumar.
