As the midterm election season approaches, an Ohio GOP congressman who decided to turn on Trump has decided to not run for re-election. Anthony Gonzalez – one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president after the January 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol – would have faced Max Miller in the 2022 primary. Trump has endorsed Miller, his former White House and campaign aide.
Tom Zawistowski, president of the Ohio-based We the People Convention, says the decision by the two-term congressman – who represents a district Trump won by 15 points in 2020 – was pretty easy to make.
"Anthony Gonzalez was going to lose because he stabbed the people in his district in the back when he turned on President Trump," the Ohio activist tells AFN. "He read the writing on the wall and he dropped out."
Zawistowski says he did correspond with Gonzalez the day he decided to drop out. "And I told him he did the right thing. I think we're going to have a great congressman in Max Miller, and I think you're seeing this around the country. Trump has really strong coattails."
But Zawistowski admits being concerned that the former president has had some bad advice on some endorsements.
"Some of the people he endorses are not on his side; they're too much like RINOs [Republican in Name Only]," he continues. "So we have to just keep corresponding with the president and try to help guide him in that way …. [People need to] keep writing the president and tell him who in their area he should endorse."
Gonzalez said regarding the January 6 incident that Trump "helped organize and incite a mob that attacked the United States Congress in an attempt to prevent us from completing our solemn duties as prescribed by the Constitution." He also accused the president of abandoning his post during the Capitol riot, "thus further endangering all present." The Ohio Republican Party censured him in May for voting in February to impeach Trump.
