GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger's moves to "pander" to Democrats and fight against his party backfired against him and his career is "obviously over now," Catalina Lauf, the Republican who had been running against him in Illinois, said Saturday on Newsmax.
"America has rid itself of a RINO," Lauf told "Saturday Report" after Kinzinger announced his retirement. "Over the last few months, since we launched the campaign against him, we raised nearly a million dollars. We had people from every part of the district, on both sides of the aisle, that were so sick of this guy."
Kinzinger is in his sixth term representing Illinois' 16th Congressional District.
Early Friday, Illinois' Democrat-led legislature approved a new congressional map that cut the number of Republican House seats from five to three, including eliminating the Kinzinger-held 16th Congressional District and forcing him into sharing another with GOP Reps. Darin LaHood, Mary E. Miller, and Mike Bost, reports The Washington Post.
Later Friday morning, Kinzinger announced he would not seek reelection, but denied his political career is over.
He had come under fire in recent months for his anti-Trump stance, for voting in favor of impeaching the former president, and for serving as one of just two Republicans on the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 incidents at the Capitol.
Lauf told Newsmax that Kinzinger's "whole M.O." on the campaign was how he was on the attack against former President Donald Trump and "how brave he was to go against Republican values."
"He was on MSNBC and CNN constantly bashing the Republican Party and ultimately supporting the Biden administration and lying, but at the first sign of a challenge and adversity for somebody who spoke a lot about leadership, he cowered pretty click quickly, so we're very excited now to be continuing on the campaign," Lauf said.
She added career politicians like Kinzinger fail to realize "after they've been in the swamp for far too long" is the average American can see through lies and phoniness.
"We're truly in a movement where people are so sick of the button-up career politicians that sit there, forget who they are, and then they come back to their districts and wonder why people don't support them," Lauf said. "They don't even talk like you and I do, average Americans, half the time. They're certainly not present in their districts, and it's so time for everyday servant leadership authenticity to be put back into Washington."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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