Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District is no stranger to national political attention, having been the center of controversy in not one but both of President Donald Trump’s impeachments.

During Trump’s first impeachment, MI-03 conservative independent representative Justin Amash sided with Democrats in voting to impeach the president. Over a year later, Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) broke with his party and voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection.

Meijer’s decision infuriated many Republicans. Meijer himself said that he might have committed “political suicide” by voting to charge then-President Trump with incitement of insurrection. He framed his decision to impeach as “putting the interest of the country first” rather than his political career. 

Many local Republicans disagree and see this as a betrayal of the conservative principles that he ran on. Both the Barry County Republican Party and the Calhoun County Republican Party censured Meijer. The Third Congressional District Committee of the Michigan Republican Party voted on a motion to censure Meijer, which failed in an 11-11 tie. The Calvin University Republicans have not taken a position on the matter as of Feb. 24.

Republican officials aren’t the only people frustrated with Meijer’s vote. Tom Norton, who ran in the 2020 republican primary against Meijer, recently announced that he would be challenging Meijer in 2022. Norton is an Afghanistan War veteran and a strong supporter of Trump. In an interview with Chimes, Norton said that he is running against Meijer because the Republican voters of MI-03 feel betrayed. Norton said that Meijer’s vote to impeach may have been one of conscience, but that “conscience doesn’t equal constitutionality.” 

Norton has three main issues with Trump’s second impeachment. He believes witnesses and victims should not serve as jurors, thus many of the congress people had a conflict of interest. Second, Norton takes issue with the trial’s speediness and thinks that there was no due process. Also, he does not see the Capitol riot as an insurrection. He compared the riot with the protests over police brutality this summer. “Insurrection is what happened this summer,” said Norton. Along with many other Republicans, he has denounced Peter Meijer for voting to impeach the former President because of these reasons. 

Norton denounced the Capitol riot. However, his rebuke came with a few caveats. Norton believes protest is a fundamental human right guaranteed by the Constitution and that many of the people at the Capitol on Jan. 6th were exercising that right. In addition, Norton does not blame the riots on President Trump, the far-right. He blames it on the decades of establishment politicians on both sides for “abandoning” the middle class by shipping jobs overseas. “Those people [on January 6th] were fighting for their lives,” Norton said.

Calvin student Paul Dick accused Meijer of “not representing” the people that voted for him in his decision to vote to impeach the former president. 

Dick stated inaccurately that the people who participated in the Capitol riots of Jan. 6 were not from the Trump rally.  “They were not the same people. There were different people at the Capitol than the ones that were at the Trump rally.” Dick went on to allege that there were “lots of ANTIFA members” at the Capitol riots. There is no credible evidence to back up his claim.

Norton’s campaign is already receiving more grassroots donations and attention than it did in the final weeks of the 2020 election. However, Meijer stands firm on his decision, and he says that the President “betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection we suffered.”